the effects of alcohol

Porter: Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance:…..
Macbeth: And it’s prose, not verse.
William Shakespeare, 1605
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Macbeth

Leave a Comment

is-saħħa tal-kotra

xtaqt nuri li ili naħseb fl’inkwiet li kien minn dejjem fuq moħħok

xtaqt nuri li dejjem iffukajna fuq issues li jaffettaw il-‘business’

xtaqt nuri kemm konna kapaci, iktar mill-konsulenti

xtaqt nuri kemm tbagħlna, kemm konna tajbin, kemm konna ta’ valur imprezzabbli.

imma minn dan xejn ma jidher.

għax jien ħazin, għax int? jew ta’ bejnietna?

aħna kaxxa sewda. kulħadd jistemer l iswed. ittihom tort?

nagħmlu dak li kulħadd jistenna jkun hemm mingħajr ma jqis kif qiegħed hemm. avolja mhux xogħlna.

u fejn jidher dal ħsieb? bieb jinfetaħ? bozza tixgħel? tarag li ma jizloqx? trab għat tifi tan nirien? kmamar utli għaliex vojta?

ma tridx tħallas ghal servizz.

imma tippretendih. u allura ma jiswa xejn.

dak li tħoss jgħodd. ghax ma taħsibx.

li thoss jikkmanda.

ta xejn nittama. ma jaħsbux.

izda it-tama tieqaf wara il-mewt.

u għalhekk bid dmugħ f għajnejja ninsab.

xi bluagni. jien x’se nirbaħ? x’se nitlef?

mhux xogħol bhall-oħrajn.

m hux facli taqsam dak li tħoss u anqas dak li taf.

u ngħid li huma zmagati! min jaf!

min hu il-maħniex?

min ma jaħsibx bhal kotra. min ma jmexxijiex.

il kotra tikkmanda is-suq.

jien narrex biex nifhem. u ma nifhimx.

għax m hemmx x’tifhem. mhux logiku. jien logika nifhem.

x’gennn,

x’tahwid.

kulħadd jifhem.

jien ukoll.

kulħadd jaccetta.

minbarra jien.

thossok tibbies. din is sahha fejn taqbad tmur?

x’ħela ta’ energija.

mhux tagħom ta.

tiegħi, ghax jien minix mill- kotra.

hekk sew jew le?

bhali ħadd ma jifhima. għax moħħ in nies għadu jikkaccja l iljuni africani, u jkabbar il-ħxejjex fil-mesopotamja

mela x’l aħjar? ninbidel jien jew niccaqlaq?

uff.

aħħ.

ajma.

f’sieqek. qum min hemm u stenbah, f’gieħ ommi.

ilbes nuċċali  f’għajnejk, mhux stallett f sidri.

dak li nixtieq. imma ta’ xejn.

kif tgħid ommi, nikkrepa jkollni.

jien bajtra jew iljun?

kuljum b’xi grajja mhix mitmuma,

kemm jamlu għaġeb id dutturi. mistenni li jbagħtu. u allura mistenni li jitgħadru,

u min bħali. mistenni xejn. imkien u qatt. li ma jidhirx ma jgħoddx.

li ma tafx bih, ma jeżistix.

arroganza? le mhux hekk isejjħula

laqizmu? le. hekk sew, jgħidulek, għax inħossuna tajjeb.

mhux tarahom x’hinuma kuntenti flimkien? tarafhom malajr.  ilsien imdendel, u baxxuti.

għax il-kotra hekk taħseb. hi fis sew

JIEN fil-hem. JIEN naħli ħini. ghax ħadd ma jifhima bħali.

iġru għal ġol-ħajt.

Ta’ xejn tkun loġiku. tkun rett. tkun fis-sew. x’sew?

tmienja u tmenin, eqreb it-tmenin mid disgħin.  Is-sew it-tmenin, dak li il-kotra TĦOSS li hu sew.

tistaqsijiex. ismagħa tgemgem.

il kotra. hi tazel li min imexxiha, mhux kontra.

qalbi tingħafas ghal dan. nifimha il-mixja kotra, u nimxi kontriha għax naf li għad tweġġa

x tiċrita f qalbi. ma nistgħax namel dak li il-kotra trid. ghax naf li hazin.

u ma nistgħax namel l aħjar. għax il-kotra tirvilla.

nies bħali jistennew iridu.

jittamaw fil-ġejjieni.

li għad il-kotra tqum u tinbagħ li l=iljuni il-bogħod qiegħdin.

u sa dan it-tant, nittama.



Leave a Comment

Sun server serial number

Need to know the serial number of a Sun server? easy!

/usr/sfw/bin/ipmitool fru

This will give you the complete list of parts of the system with each part’s serial, including the chassis serial number. Very handy!

Leave a Comment

Dream and Believe

“In order to achieve great things, one must not only ACT but also DREAM, not only PLAN but also BELIEVE”

Lino Ferris, 2010

Leave a Comment

Cloud Computing Primer – Where does one start from

Cloud Computing – Where does one start from

Consider this analogy: historically, a developer determines when it’s appropriate to create new threads. Today, a developer can use an API to attach a new server with the same ease. The ability to program an application architecture dynamically puts enormous power in the hands of developers with a commensurate amount of responsibility. When this power is well understood and harnessed, the results can be spectacular. Animoto’s mashup tool that creates a video from a set of images and music scaled from 50 to 3,500 servers in just three days due in part to an architecture that allowed it to scale easily. For this to work, the application had to be built to be horizontal scaled, have limited state, and manage its own deployment through APIs.

Similarly, when the New York Times wished to convert 11 million articles and images in its archive to PDF format, one developer using 100 Amazon EC2 simple Web service interface instances running Hadoop completed the job in 24 hours for less than $300 of software development. The potential is immense. But if an application has a lot of state and can’t be deployed programmatically, it probably isn’t an application that is suited to this model.

Having standards that make deployment easy is more important than having the perfect environment for the job. There will continue to be specialization, however the 80/20 rule applies and the starting point should be with a standard.

Loose-coupled, Stateless, Fail-in-place computing

Cloud computing assumes that everything is temporary, and it’s just as easy to redeploy an entire application then it is to manually patch a set of individual virtual machines. If data is small, or the application is stateless, a hybrid cloud can be much more useful than if large amounts of data must be transferred into a public cloud for a small amount of processing. The classic example of Cloud computing with parallelisation with load balancing is a number of stateless Web server all accessing the same data, where the inkling workload is distributed across the pool of servers.

The cloud computing philosophy for application maintenance is not to patch, but redeploy. Managing the model that created a virtual machine image, not the image itself, simplifies this redeployment. Application images are not patched; they are throwaway objects and thus need to be stateless. A component should be able to “fail-in-place” with little or no impact on the application. This requires a paradigm shift for administrators and developers.

Service Offering Types

Customers can manipulate not just virtual machine images, but also servers, storage systems, network devices, and network topology. Hybrid clouds combine both public and private cloud models, and they can be particularly effective when both types of cloud are located in the same facility. Cloud service providers tend to offer services that can be grouped into three categories: Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service. The first and ‘oldest’ is ‘Software as a Service (SaaS)’. Google offer GoogleApps, Microsoft offer online versions of Office, and so on. The second is ‘Platform as a Service (PaaS)’, typically offered through an API which integrates within one’s application. The third is ‘Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)’, offering servers, databases, firewalls and routers as virtual appliances. The latter is the main topic of this write-up.

Benefits

Minimise Investment Risk – If an application’s success is short-lived or does not deliver, you won’t have invested in extra capacity needlessly. When pushing an application to the cloud, scalability and the risk of purchasing too much or too little infrastructure becomes the cloud provider’s issue. The cloud provider typically has such a massive amount of clients that it can absorb the growth and workload spikes of individual customers, reducing the financial risk they face.

Benefits which can also be reaped by using in-house virtualisation (e.g. VMware).

Speed to Deployment – Increasing infrastructure capacity can potentially become a matter of minutes.

Availability – As a side effect of adapting one’s application to the cloud, availability will improve and many  infrastructure SPoFs will be eliminated. Servers can fail, but the service will remain available.

Reliability – Applications are now built where entire servers can fail and not cause disruption, since server-specific data is irrelevant. This means that there will always be an active server ready to reply to a user’s request.

Flexibility and Agility – Cloud applications enables going to market very quickly.

Applicability

The classic example of parallelization with load balancing is a number of stateless Web servers all accessing the same data, where the incoming workload is distributed across the pool of servers. Cloud computing takes the concept to the next level.

Applicability to Databases – Database management systems have adapted to run in cloud environments by horizontally scaling database server and partitioning tables across them. This technique, known as sharding, allows multiple instances of database software to scale performance in a cloud environment by partitioning tables across multiple database instances, supporting large databases through horizontal scaling.

Applicability to CPU-intensive applications – Rather than creating a new thread for each task (example frame rendering), cloud optimized applications create a new virtual machines to render each frame, increasing performance through horizontal scaling

References:

http://www.sun.com/featured-articles/CloudComputing.pdf

Leave a Comment

Privileged Identity Management

Identity Management is more than just password management. The salient features are:

  • Password management – At the most basic level, Identity Management solutions provide management of passwords so that no user need remember more than one master password
  • Transparent logging – Automated fill-in of credentials enables faster login, and a more secure operations. A user may be allowed to log in without knowing the password, since ‘viewing the password in clear text’ is typically a separate permission
  • PCI compliance reports – Automated, reliable and auditable reports that facilitate compliance
  • Access Auditability – Know with certainty who accessed which systems, when, including accountability for shared accounts (Cisco enable, UNIX root)
  • Integrate with HSM Hardware Security Modules to encrypt the database. These can be either dedicated devices or PCI cards
  • Integrate with LDAP and Two-Factor Auth services
  • Typically include an Application Inventory, Privileged Accounts Inventory and User Activity Reports

Overview of the CyberArk solution:

  • The Privileged Identity Management (PIM) Suite is a full life-cycle solution for securing, managing, automatically changing and monitoring all activities associated with Privileged Accounts
  • The Vault is the core system which encrypts the database. It can and is usually encrypted using hardware tokens
  • AIM  Application Identity Manager – Script to extract the password from the database, enabled per host/subnet, time
  • PSM Privileged Session Manager – Records user sessions
  • Distinguishing features
    • Several applications supported out of the box
    • Has a scripting language for supporting custom applications
    • Services you do not have access to are not even listed
    • MS cluster aware
    • Sends snmp traps to central logging device
    • Cisco devices, auto-login to the user level, then manually login to enable

Leave a Comment

Takeaways from Cisco Social Solutions presentation

Thu 26th Nov 2009

  • 17% of Cisco employees bring their personal MAC to the office
  • Information Overload is a business issue
  • You need to push users to use a technology
    • North Wales police only saw users using their unified communications when the head office burnt down, and users were required to work from sub-offices. Once the head office was re-made, only 50% of staff returned, with half remaining mobile
  • There has been extensive integration with Sybian, Windows, RIM, BREW for presence, IM and voice
  • Web-Ex client is available on iPhone
  • Cisco have just launched an Enterprise Collaboration Platform (a portal)
  • Presence status is central to IM, voice, email, video (e.g. in a meeting can take IM but not voice)
  • People will not trust VOIP unless they “see the white in their peers eyes” for video conversations
  • Conferencing and IP communications is offered by Cisco as a SaaS
  • Microsoft OCS can be used as a front end for the client side. This is used mainly due to Microsoft’s UI familiarity for users
  • Additionally, the XMPP gateway add-on allows integration with partners gateways (Cisco and non). It would be interesting to know how easily this can be achieved in practice

Leave a Comment

Poezija tal-Pepe

This poem encapsulates a number of changes happening in contemporary Maltese society, mainly the loss of many Maltese words for English ones, an unstructured support to teachers on new words in Maltese, as well as an increasing number of people who are neither able to speak Maltese nor English.

L-ghalliem jghidilna dejjem
Li l-Malti hu hafif,
‘Mma jien nipprova niktbu
U lanqas biss naf kif.

Jista’jkun illi mohhi
Ikun mitluf, kultant,
Jew forsi, kif tghid ommi,
Jien hrigt ftit injorant.

Ghax l-aktar li nithawwad,
U naghmel salt caflis,
Hu meta nkun se nikteb
Xi kliem gej mil-Ingliz.

L-ghalliem qalilna niktbu
Dal-kliem, kif inhossuh,
isda…mhux in-nies kollha
L-istess preciz jghiduh!

Missieri jghidlu telefon
In-nannu: teleforn
Il-Mummy (jew Mami): telefown
L-ghalliem jghidilna blekbord
Iz-zija tghidlu blakbord
Mark Xuereb jghidlu blekbort.

Jien tghidx kemm ili nara :
Jeans u mobile miktubin,
Narahom fuq it-television (Sorry: televixin…) (Sori: sori)
Imm’issa suppost nikteb:
gins, mowbajl, tenkju, plis,
guddej, gudnajt u hendawt,
“Gej fowtow, ghidu cis!”

L-ghalliem jibqa’ jghidilna
Li l-Malti hu hafif,
‘Mma n-nannu l-bierah qalli:
“Dan Malti tat-teftif!”


Tu rajt diss moltis properli
Jess, ju mast hev samm gazz,
Plis, gimi e brejk, ticers:
Jur gona drajv mi nazz!

Leave a Comment

Inzel xita, inzel

Inżel xita inżel
Ħalli jikber il-ħaxix,
Il-ħaxix nagħtuh lill-mogħża….
Iżda mogħża jien m’għandix!
Inżel inżel, xita inżel
Biex it-toroq fis tfottihom;
ga qegħdin kif Alla jridhom.
W issa inti żżid teqridom

Inżel xita, x’ala biebek
Illi l-wied żewg piedi jogħla,
Għandek ħabta terħi bewlek
Waqt li t-tfal sejrin l-iskola.

Ganni jidgħi gol-karozza
Għax waqfitlu… trid tarah…
id-dinja… anki l-mobile
‘qulla… nesa jiccargjah.

Fuq l-istejg hemm sitt fidili
Imrekknin flimkien qaqocca,
Għadda Freddie bil-vann diesel
U xi ħlew, fil-pront tahom docca.

Iva, inżel xita, inżel,
Kull sekonda elf gallun,
L-ilma jigri lejn il-baħar
Flok jingabar fil-gibjun.

U ‘l-Armata mitt elf sejħa
Għall-għajnuna qed taslilha,
Jessie tibki, cemplitilhom:
Għandha l-Poodle qed jegħrqilha.

Ghax-xita jitlob l-isqof
huwa jitlob lil-Mulej

u kif ghamlet bezqa ilma

kif gherqilna l-Mater Dei.

Censu qal li farlu l-loki
U d-dar kollha sfat latrina,
Għandu l-bewl taħt il-wall unit
U żewg qlalet fil-vetrina.

Inżel, inżel, xita inżel
J’Alla x-xemx tigi w tobormok.
Għax ma tmurx għand boxxla xjaten?
Għax ma tmurx tieħdu go …. ….

Leave a Comment

news digest

Leave a Comment

Older Posts »