Category Archives: Lemonisms

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LDAP and C#
I haven’t yet started to write code in C# … it’s something that I want to take a look at. I saw this posting and started to think that maybe I found some examples that might get me going. I enjoy developing code that uses LDAP directories and the data they contain … and this article demonstrates Novell’s work to continue to ease the development of LDAP-aware applications.

Jan 18th, 2004: LDAP class libraries in Mono tutorial.. Sunil Kumar has written an introduction to Novell.LDAP class libraries, which are part of Mono. [Mono Project News]

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MP3s in the car? Been there … done that …
When I travel, I always take my laptop, and make sure that I have a good collection of MP3s on it. I rip all of my CDs to MP3 for portability, and often connect my laptop to the stereo in my truck. Because of 802.11 wireless technologies, I also realized a while ago that I can sit in my truck and download MP3s from my server in the house!

Last summer we picked up a small travel trailer and I am slowly outfitting it with current gear. I have a Sony multi-CD changer, and we have some surround-sound speakers that we aren’t using in the house. I’m also going to install a small server with full wireless connections – both client and access point. While the trailer is sitting at home, out by our barn, it will be on my home network … so we’ll be able to copy MP3s and other software to and from the trailer.

Rockford is offering a similar capability with their jukebox … which might be easier to use for the average user. I know that I’m not interested … I have my solution.

Download Music to Your Car. Rockford Corp. is offering a jukebox that sits in the trunk of a car and downloads music from a PC: Users could pull their car into their garage and at a predetermined time each night the jukebox would download new music from a PC in the house. The product retails for $600. This is a good idea but I’m not sure what the benefits are over using any portable digital music player in the car. I have an iRiver and recently bought an adaptor so I can listen to music from the iRiver in my car stereo. My method doesn’t do automatic downloads but that seems to me a small benefit to using the jukebox in the trunk…. [Wi-Fi Networking News]

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Lots going on at Oracle …
Although all of the messages from Oracle are that things are going well, it seems that a lot of changes are going on at the database giant. Just the news since the first of the year indicates that something is going on.

When looking at the Oracle home page, its easy to see that they are looking to move beyond being “just a database company.” (As of today its talking about showing you Oracle Web Conferencing!) They have to do something. The Open Source database servers are coming … MySQL and PostgreSQL … and how do you compete with free?

Some of the recent articles, to me, indicate something is being felt … big time. “Oracle CFO to leave post, become chairman“, “Ellison: No need for wall-to-wall Oracle“, “Oracle CEO, CFO to preplan stock sales“, and “Oracle ships 10g database, cuts price” … all of these show that they are reacting to market pressures … IMHO.

It will be interesting to see how Oracle leverages its installed base, and where it goes next.

Oracle ships 10g database, cuts price. The database heavyweight ships the Unix versions of its much-anticipated 10g database, matches Microsoft on pricing and cuts the cost of its clustering features. [CNET News.com – Front Door]

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Living Machines
This is a really good read from Wired about a variety of areas of technology and science … and more.

“Copernicus demoted humanity by removing Earth from the center of the universe. Darwin showed that, rather than being made in God’s image, people were merely products of nature’s experimentation. Now, advances in fields as disparate as computer science and genetics are dealing our status another blow. Researchers are learning that markets and power grids have much in common with plants and animals. Their findings lead to a startling conclusion: Life isn’t the exception, but the rule.”

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More mesh network attention
This is an article by an IBM employee about mesh-networks. Some interesting perspectives and research going on …

City-Net: The future of wireless. Imagine a wireless meshing network that connects emergency workers, traffic signals, message signs, public transit vehicles, information kiosks, video cameras and other city resources. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]

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Stay away from the red plants …
This is a very impressive project that is taking genetic engineering into whole new areas of usage. Yes … as the title of the article reads … they have created a plant that will change it’s color if its roots come into contact with a landmine. Green is good … red is bad!

I found two articles about this:

Genetically Engineered Plant Can Detect Landmines. Red Nova Jan 27 2004 7:00PM GMT [Moreover – moreover…]

Flower Power Takes on Land Mines. A Danish biotech company develops a genetically modified flower that changes color when the plant is close to a land mine, making it easier to track down and remove the hidden explosives. [Wired News]

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More progress in flexible displays and organics
This is an example of the progress being made with flexible displays based on organic materials. This company with working on “electronic paper” as one of their products, and is working towards replacing the glass-based LCD panels in laptops and other devices. Here is a Washington Post article, along with an article in Scientific American. This was also mentioned on Slashdot.

Polymer Vision Produces 5″ Rollable Displays [Slashdot]

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Visualizing Social Networks
While working with network management software I always enjoyed creating ways to visualize the networks, and more importantly their traffic patterns and flows. I am hooked on visualization. This is a very cool tool written to visualize the social networks on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels. Very good work …

Inferring and Visualizing Social Networks on IRC. By using an IRC bot to monitor the activity in an IRC channel, it is possible to infer a social network that connects the users in the channel. Visualizing these social networks is not only interesting, but has a variety of potential applications. [Advogato]

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I’m impressed with Netgear, and their wireless products
I was recently looking at some new 802.11x access points to see what I want to use in some new projects. I came across the Netgear WG302 and was truly impressed with this product. It has some very good radio specs, and a long list of advanced management capabilities. The advanced capabilities all seem to come from the fact that they have based the core functionality on embedded Linux.

This is now the second 802.11g access points that I have found that provide a full embedded system that could be extensible to add additional “edge” computing. This article seems to align with what I am seeing … that some people at Netgear are really thinking, and producing some very strong products.

Wireless gear boosts NetGear’s optimism. The company says it is raising its fourth-quarter outlook, as well as launching a secondary offering on behalf of its shareholders who are selling 9 million shares [CNET News.com – Front Door]

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More vitualization coming …
This is a good article that offers some interesting views on Server Virtualization. With the latest announcements from Intel of possibly seeing 4Ghz processors this year, it seems that virtualized environments are only going to increase.

Plan on Server Virtualization. Running multiple “virtual” operating systems on a single machine can help you cut costs, boost security and improve software development, say Avanade’s Chris Burry and Craig Nelson. [Computerworld Software News]