Welcome to September, my how time flies. We only have a month to finish preparing for UTOSC, and you only have a month to register!

The price is our standard $70, but there are plenty of discount codes available. If you are a member of any Local User Group (LUG) then you can get a code for up to half off!

A quick word to potential sponsors: UTOSC is the premier event in the Mountain West to capture the attention of hundreds of IT professionals, as well as active hobbyists and some very loyal customers. Please contact me for more information about sponsoring UTOSC.

Remember, register now! http://2010.utosc.com

Commodity Hardware Crunching Pi

Commodity hardware has just shown up the big guys in Pi crunching.

Two fellas from Japan have reached the 5 trillionth digit of Pi using on commodity hardware and a custom Pi crunching software. Here are the specs of the box:

• Processor 2 x Intel Xeon X5680 @ 3.33 GHz – (12 physical cores, 24 hyperthreaded)
• Memory 96GB DDR3 @ 1066MHz – (12 x 8 GB – 6 Channel) – Samsung (M393B1K70BH1)
• Motherboard Asus Z8PE-D12
• Hard Drives
  • 1 TB SATA II (Boot drive) – Hitachi (HDS721010CLA332)
  • 3 x 2 TB SATA II (Store Pi Output) – Seagate (ST32000542AS)
  • 16 x 2 TB SATA II (Computation) – Seagate (ST32000641AS)
• Raid Controller 2 x LSI MegaRaid SAS 9260-8i
• Operating System Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise x64

It took the guys 90 days to tackle the 5 trillionth digit, which is a 2. I have to wonder what kind of increase we’d see if we simply changed the OS to Linux or BSD based instead of a clunky Windows Server install?

You can find more pictures and details of the event at http://www.numberworld.org/misc_runs/pi-5t/details.html

I am always amazed at the books that No Starch Press suggests for us to review, and The Art of Assembly Language truly wasn’t even on my radar. When it was suggested to me I couldn’t resist the opportunity to break out of high level coding and dive into Assembly.

Wikipedia says of Assembly:

Assembly languages are a type of low-level languages for programming computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other (usually) integrated circuits.

Sweet! This book will teach me how to work with microprocessors and microcontrollers! That is what I thought, and I was close.

The Art of Assembly Language from No Starch Press covers the basics of all low level programming but has a pretty heavy slant toward intel based CPUs. With support for Linux, Mac and Windows, and even FreeBSD.

The book is big, heavy and full of knowledge. It covers the HLA (High Level Assembly) which is the best match of high level coding with low level code. The author, Randall Hyde, starts with the absolute basics explaining what each part of the controller (cpu) is and what it is meant for. He explains why things are setup the way they are and even how things have changed over the history of computing.

If you are asking yourself why you need to pick up this book, take this quick little survey:

• Have you ever wondered how a computer actually works?
• Do you ever dream in code?

If you answered yes to either of those then you probably want to go get this book right now.

The Art of Assembly really opened my eyes to what goes on in the underbelly of the computer, and I have a better understanding of why my code works now. Learning HLA has truly been an experience, and it is one I think the whole world of programmers should have.

So a while back I found a cool little site called Glyde, and their About Us page really sums up what they are all about:

Glyde.com is a new marketplace that combines the great deals of a person-to-person online marketplace with the ease, simplicity, and safety of a retail store.

So I think the best thing about Glyde is they already know 95% of the details for anything you want to sell on their site, and they make doing business super easy.

Start a Sale

Getting started is easy, simply sign up (free), and start listing products. You can sell DVDs, CDs, Games (console) and Books. Listing is as easy as typing in the title of the product, or ISBN (or other unique identifier). They will load your store with all the images and descriptions you need.

Price to High?

One thing I find particularly handy about Glyde (beside their very easy to use interface) is the notifications that my products are not within market price. Let’s say I list a book for $25 (market value) and two weeks go by and no one buys. As time goes by books lose value and so prices in the market adjust. Glyde doesn’t auto adjust your price, but they do tell you what the system considers fair market value and you can decide to accept that and change your price, or ignore it and try to sell your book for more.

Shipping Sucks

Now let’s admit that we all hate having to deal with shipping details and figuring out pricing for books etc. Well Glyde makes this easy too! When you sell an item on Glyde they handle the shipping. What they do is mail you an envelope ( or other mail package ) which you put your item into and drop in the mail. That’s it! Your item you sold is then sent to the purchaser and all is grand.

Glyde Fees

So how much is this awesome service? Well cheaper than some, and more than others. Glyde takes 10% of the sale (not bad), plus the cost of the shipping materials. The listings are always free.

Go Glyde!

Glyde is really a great way to look at purchasing new media, and I hope to see good things from them in the future.

Head on over to Glyde now for the Utahcon.com Book Sale!

Matthew Weier O’Phinney has posted about the State of Zend Framework 2.0:

The past few months have kept myself and my team quite busy, as we’ve turned our attentions from maintenance of the Zend Framework 1.X series to Zend Framework 2.0. I’ve been fielding questions regularly about ZF2 lately, and felt it was time to talk about the roadmap for ZF2, what we’ve done so far, and how the community can help.

He goes on to talk about the processes being taken to get Zf2.0 the exemplar of PHP 5.3 and to add namespaces to the project. He talks about his team, the road map and the struggles they have already expereienced:

After completing this process, my entire team — all three of us — started the work of migrating the code to namespaces. Ralph wrote a tool that scanned the library and created a map file of existing classes and suggested namespace/classname combinations. We then used this tool as a launching point for the migration, each of us working on a component at a time. This work was by no means automated — we discovered very quickly that such a tool only took care of the most cursory work. I detailed some of our findings a couple months back; we ran into a number of issues we never anticipated, and the progress has been far from speedy. At this point, however, we have migrated everything but theZend_Service classes, the MVC, and those components that build on top of the MVC (Application, Navigation, Form, etc.).

Finally he shares details about getting ZF2.0 available through Git and Github, and what the community can do to help:

A number of contributors are also starting to discuss rewrites and refactoring of components. Much of this is being done on the zf-contributors mailing list, and some on the #zftalk.dev channel on Freenode. If you are interested in contributing, I highly recommend subscribing to the list and dropping into the channel when you can.

You can read the post in it’s entirety at  http://weierophinney.net

So you are probably seeing a lot of people posting something about liking Olive Garden and how they are getting a $100 Gift Card from Olive Garden for simply following a few steps on a site called “http://eat-for-free-at-og.com/”

Now here’s the thing, it’s not actually a scam, but it certainly is NOT free. Why do I say it isn’t free? Because I can read, and here are the details as they actually work out.

First you are told there are three easy steps:

1. Click the “Like” button
2. Click the “Share” button
3. Click the “Claim” button

This is when the “free” part of this whole deal breaks down. You have already done the most damage at this point because you have announced to all of Facebook that you are easily duped because you don’t read the fine print as poorly designed sites like http://eat-for-free-at-og.com/

So here is what happens when you click on the “Claim” button you are sent to “amazingfreerewards.com” which is a great name since there is NOTHING free on their site. Ever.

Amazingfreerewards.com is a spam house that dupes you into either buying junk for a “free” prize, or (and more likely) gathering your email information so they can sell it to third parties to advertise and fill your inbox with junk mail (that isn’t technically spam because you have given full permission for them and anyone they choose to use your email address for advertising purposes).

Let’s look at the fine print shall we:

You must participate in and satisfy a total of 8 Sponsor Offers as follows:
Page 1: 2 offers
Page 2: 2 offers
Page 3: 4 offers
To satisfy the requirements for the Free $100 Olive Garden Gift Card, you must participate in the above-stated number of offers for each page (participating in offers in excess of those stated above for a given page does not reduce the number of offers in which you must participate on the other pages), and you must complete each of the Sponsor Offers pages listed above.
Please note Sponsor offers may require you to sample and/or purchase products of interest and/or take other actions such as applying for or obtaining a loan or extension of credit (including credit cards), transferring a balance, or similar steps. In order to remain eligible for your gift, you must complete all of the sponsor offers that require you to sample and purchase products of interest within 180 days of signing up for our service.

It couldn’t be more straight forward than that. You must satisfy 2 of the offers on Page 1. Let’s see what they are:

• Netflix (free-ish)
• Miracle Whites Trial – your credit card will be charged only $1.00 plus $3.95 S&P (non-refundable) — Then the auto renew your “membership” at a price of $69.22/month (good luck canceling)
• Absolute Green Tea — Free Trial with $4.95 S&H — (buried on another Terms and Conditions page) If you do not cancel by calling 1-866-762-0945 within the Trial Period, the credit card you provided at signup will be charged $79.93 for the Product you received during the Trial Period.

I think you get the picture. To complete any two of those offers you are looking at at least $70/month if not more! Not worth a $100 Olive Garden card.

So let’s all agree to not partake in this scam, and maybe instead let’s call the owner of the site, a one Rachel Johnson who is registered for the domain at 121 6Th Ave Apt2, Altoona, PA 16602 — You can call her at (814) 201-2184… I think to be fair we should all call late at night, just so she knows we really hate these sorts of scams.

Enjoy your weekend!

Ceiling Cat

Ceiling Cat announces:

#hackUTOS is is happening tomorrow, Friday June 4th, at CoffeeConnection!

Here’s how it works. #hackUTOS is a gathering of the hacking inclined. There is a main project (ConMan) that is being hacked on for the purpose of volunteering for Utah Open Source Conference 2010. More details on ConMan in a minute.

If you are looking to generally gather with geeks then this is the premier event in June for your geekiness! We will be gathering at CoffeeConnection who has great caffeinated beverages for sale (as well as food) and we will be getting our Geek on.

Want to get your geek on, but can’t make it in person… we are going to be on IRC too! Find us on Freenode at #hackUTOS

If you are not interested in hacking on ConMan, we still encourage you to come on down! We want all geeks to come by and share in the glory of #hackUTOS. That means you can even bring your own project. Think of #hackUTOS as a Jelly or CoWork (for 1 night). Come share your project and your ideas, find people, network, and generally have a good time.

Now some details on ConMan!

ConMan is the Conference Management software used by UTOS for the UTOS Conference. It is written in Python, using the Django framework. It is hosted at GitHub and it is open to the public. If you don’t hack python do not turn and run just yet. We are in need of things besides python coding. We need folks who are willing to conceptualize, we need graphic designers to help make the app look pretty, we need people to help with bug reporting, and more. If you are reading this blog post you are more than qualified to come help us tomorrow (and at any other #hackUTOS event).

Alright… I am tired of typing, and Ceiling cat is starting to freak me out… see you at #hackUTOS

I personally user Tmobile, and over the last few days (about a week) I am more glad than ever that I am on Tmobile when I see what other carriers are doing to their data plans. The idea of getting more and more restrictive with bandwidth is absurd. Every day prices for broadband services for the home drop, just look at your local providers. Every day we lay more and more fiber in this land to make the broadband cheaper and easier to access. In countries outside the US broadband is not just available but it is kicking butt and taking names.

This isn’t limited to just the land lines either, oh no this includes the mobile broadband. However, here in the states we seem to be taking the wrong direction to how we treat wireless broadband. Instead of making it more affordable and unlimited companies seem to be wanting to limit its use by charging more and more for less and less.

First Verizon’s CEO Lowell McAdam announced they are going to be moving toward “buckets”:

So the model to me going forward is I expect that people will have realistically four or five or six devices that they have to connect to the network, and it may be as many as 20. And so I think you’re much more into the mode of instead of a device and a price plan, you are into let me buy a bucket of megabytes and I will use them any way I want.

Now McAdams goes on to say that he actually views data plans as the future of the company and that voice will be a matter of grandfathered plans by 2012 as Verizon expects to have all plans be purely data and use VoIP as the means for voice calls. Not a terrible way to look at the future, and he is probably right.

Then today I see that AT&T is coming out with new data plans, however the sad truth is they are getting rid of unlimited plans! Basically the announcement says this:

• 200MB for $15/month
• 2GB for $25/month
• Tether for $20 on top of the 2GB plan so $45 total

This all seems horrible to me and I can’t fathom what is making these guys look in the direction they are. I know that providing cellular services isn’t cheap or easy, but I really feel like AT&T and Verizon are looking to squeeze money out of people now. Especially when you see companies like T-Mobile and Sprint offering unlimited data plans for around $30.

I think it most unfortunate that people who are with AT&T and Verizon, will be going with AT&T and Verizon won’t really care that they are being screwed, but only because they don’t really know what is happening.

Frankly I see this as yet another opportunity for the Tmobile and Sprint teams to rally around the unlimited data plans, and push hard. Make a stab at more business under their belts. Perhaps Tmobile will see these moves from their biggest competitors and really lean on their HSPA+ rollouts and get their service on par with speeds that AT&T is offering, and then hammer them with the unlimited bandwidth.

I really see the future of computing as being wireless, instead of hunting down hot spots we are just using the connections we have via our wireless companies. The current plans these clowns are working on however, would suggest they don’t really want things to go that way, which is completely silly as it’s been proven time and time again that data transfer is easier, cheaper and more reliable than current voice technologies.

If you are an AT&T or Verizon customer, now is the time to voice your opinions and let them know how you really feel about data plans, and why you think they are making grave mistakes!

For those who don’t know J. Allard is leaving Microsoft. Allard is the driving force behind the Xbox 360 and Zune movements. Below is his sign off letter that he sent to the Entertainment & Devices Division, as well as some other select individuals at Microsoft. There is a great message in this email, and so I have reposted it here to make sure more of the geeks who need the message see and read it.

From: J Allard
Date: May 25, 2010 8:56:08 AM PDT
To: “Robert (Robbie) Bach”, Entertainment & Devices Division FTE
Cc: Senior Leadership Team
Subject: Decide. Change. Reinvent.

Reinvent.

If you’ve been following along, you probably understand just how difficult it was for me to decide to leave the tribe and explore new territory, but the time has come.

My passion for our cause combined with my obsessive nature has put many of my other interests on hold for a long time. I don’t know exactly what tomorrow looks like – but if my focus has been 95% MSFT, 5% life until now, I know that the first step is to flip that ratio around. After wrapping some projects up, I will shift to 95% life and 5% MSFT. With that 5% I’ll be working for SteveB on a couple of projects beginning this fall…..

In response to the curiosity, no chairs were thrown, no ultimatums served, I am not moving to Cupertino or Mountain View, I did not take a courier job and I require no assistance finding the door. I do know that I’m going to help a couple of friends get their startups going (e.g. The Clymb), I’m planning some races (by foot, bike and off-road trucks), and I’m going to put some energy into my passion for design, the arts and philanthropy. For those of you reporting into one of my organizations, I am committed to working through all of the transition issues and assure you that The Tribe remains committed to the work you are doing and our purpose going forward.

If, at the next juncture, I decide to join a corporate tribe again, this place will definitely top my list. There are a lot of great companies out there doing terrific and meaningful work with better pizza, nicer décor and great implementations of “ls” on the desktops, but The Tribe? No one can touch our talent, our impact or our ambition. We’re the only high-tech company with the track record and self-confidence to reinvent ourselves as we have. If you want to change the world with technology, this is still the best tribe out there.

Please, put my headcount and that cardkey “invitation” to good use. Find a college student that claims we don’t get it and blogs tirelessly about our lack of agility. Track down an EE that has been focusing on fuel cells and has radical thoughts about power management. Or a social networking whiz who is tired of building little islands that go hot and cold and can’t break the mainstream. Hire a designer who’s given shape to 2 decades of beautiful automobiles and thinks we can sculpt technology to better connect to users. Infuse them with our purpose. Give them the tools. Give them lots of rope. Learn from them. Support where they take you. Invite them to redefine The Tribe.

Decide. Change. Reinvent.

I certainly will never think of my cardkey the same way again

The Utah Open Source Conference 2010, like the object in the rear view mirror, running October 7th through the 9th 2010, is closer then it appears!!

The Call for Papers for UTOSC 2010 is officially open! Paper submission deadline is July 15th, 2010 at Midnight and can be submitted through theUtah Open Source Conference website at http://2010.utosc.com.

If you’ve got something to share, something to tell, something to introduce or something to show, please take the time and submit a presentation to the Utah Open Source Conference 2010. We’d love to see your presentation!!

Some people are natural public speakers and presenters while others are reluctant to imagine themselves in front of a group of people at a conference. Nobody should feel unqualified or inexperienced to present. We want presenters who can share information at all levels.

And now, some tough questions

What should I talk about?

You should talk about Open Source software, philosophy, technology, etc. The theme for this year’s conference centers around being “free“, so your topic can be targeted at beginners, experts, or someone in between. Don’t forget that there are plenty of “free” applications out there as well!

It may help to see what topics were presented last year. Go to for information about 2009’s conference sessions.

Several sessions will be targeted at beginning or “newbie” users including those who are family members of an Open Source geek. Basic sessions around Linux, The GIMP, or WordPress are good examples of these types of sessions.

We have expanded our categories offerings this year and you can select multiple audiences as well. If there is a category you do not see listed, please let us know by emailing our program coordinator, atprogram@utos.org.

What does a response to a call for papers look like?

You should come up with a brief outline, or abstract, of your presentation and who would be interested. You should also provide some information about you, your
experience with open source software and the specific aspects you’re proposing to speak about.

Here’s an example of an abstract:

Title: Open source home security
This presentation will outline how I have used a Linux server,
IP cameras, and open source software, to provide around-the-clock
video and image surveillance of my home which is archived for
later viewing and is available for viewing via the Web when
I’m not at home.
The presentation will describe how to set up a system similar to
mine and what alternatives are available for software and hardware
in the system.

What’s in it for me?

There are lots of perks reserved for people chosen to present at the Utah Open Source Conference!

Resumé material
Having presented on a topic at a conference is a great thing to add to your resumé and could make the difference the next time you apply for a job.

Free admission
If you’re chosen as a speaker, we’ll let you — and your family — into the conference for FREE!

A picture and a paragraph
Speakers are asked to submit a digital photo and a paragraph of biographical information which will be seen by those viewing the UTOSC website and those reading the conference program.

Warm fuzzies
Being involved in the Utah Open Source Conference is a great experience. Just ask anyone who was involved in UTOSC 2007, UTOSC 2008 or UTOSC 2009.

What’s that URL again?

Go to http://2010.utosc.com and get yourself an account. Then you can submit as many presentation ideas as you wish!!