DjMagra's stuff 'n' stuff

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking around the subject of hosted desktops recently. Anyone familiar with Cloud Computing concepts will be well aware of two main cloud computing areas – Software as a Service (something along the lines of Salesforce.com or Google Apps) or Infrastructure as a Service, which is generally considered server infrastructure as a service (think Amazon AWS). AWS is a really, really good IaaS platform, but it’s very server & storage centric. For example, all the standard Amazon AMI’s (machine images) are for server OS’s (Windows 2008 server and the likes).

People are comfortable and familiar with the concepts of having their email or server infrastructure in the cloud, but not so much with the concept of having a desktop in the cloud. What if you had your Windows 7 or Mac OSX instance running in the cloud, available and accessible to you everywhere? Do you see this as being a problem? Are you comfortable with the concept? The same types of questions will arise for cloud desktops as they do for cloud email / storage solutions, namely:

• Is my data secure?
• Who owns my data?
• Can I get my data back / move it if I want to?
• Where is it hosted?
• Who has access to my data?

But, my question is, do you have other concerns about you desktop living in the cloud? All of the above questions I can easily address (and I do every single day!). I can think that network connectivity and latency will be key concerns. But what else? Method of access will be a concern, especially for corporates thinking of moving desktop infrastructure to the cloud. What do they do with all their existing hardware? What do they give their staff going forward, netbooks & thin clients?

And what about cost? In the past few weeks, I have spoken to several companies considering a move to hosted desktop solutions. But cost is a concern and this is something that I’m currently trying to evaluate and understand fully. Is a hosted desktop solution really cheaper in the long run than in-house infrastructure? Sure, you don’t need the capital outlay upfront that say an upgrade in desktop os, or hardware would be, you don’t need to pay for power and maintenance, but you do still need to pay for an access terminal.

And another key question – is hosted desktops really cloud computing? To cloud computing purists, the cloud revolves around SaaS as opposed to IaaS. Is hosted desktops something that is here to stay, or simply a stop gap measure for people until all relevant software can be packaged as a SaaS offering.

I will do a deeper dive into the technical aspects of hosted desktops in the near future, but for now I’m really interested in feedback via comments or email on peoples thoughts on this concept.

I’ve been using a new model MacBook Pro quite a bit recently and I have finally figured out what all the hype is about the MacBook Glass Trackpad. There are so many different shortcuts and time saving tips that make this a true joy to work with and really does leave you scratching your head wondering what the hell every other laptop manufacturer out there is doing.

I thought I would share some of the tips I’ve picked up recently as I know that a lot of people aren’t aware of these features.

• One finger is for regular movement of the cursor.
• Two fingers in either an up-down or side-to-side motion functions like the scroll bar allowing for easy navigation within an application, on web pages and in other documents.
• A turning of your fingers rotates objects such as photos while a pinching motion will zoom in or out on the page or object.
• Three fingers swiping side-to-side works like as forward and backward navigation and is just outstanding for web browsing or even navigating around within the Finder.
• A four-finger swipe side to-side brings up the application switcher, (similar to Cmd-Tab).
• Four fingers swiping up clears the screen of all open windows for easy access to the desktop, while a swipe down opens up the Expose view of all open windows.

This is just a quick test post using the wordpress plugin for my new iPhone.

I’m so in love with this phone it’s awesome and makes my life on the road a million times better and more productive, plus it keeps me entertained too!

You may remember back to last year, when Estonia, one of the most internet savvy, connected countries in the world, came under a widespread and well documented cyber attack, originating for the most part in Russia, and in response to some political moves that were being made in the country at the time.

I’ve just read an interesting paper, written in non-technical terms on the background and implications of the event, both on Estonia, and also on the wider world as we face into a new era of potential cyber warfare. If this sounds of interest to you, I suggest that you take a read.

Is anyone else having problems subscribing to new feeds in Google Reader today? I’ve tried to subscribe to three different feeds, and each one of them has been giving me problems! Not something I’m used to in the usually flawless Google Reader!

Ever wondered how to build a submarine fibre optic cable? PIPE Networks are a large carrier / IXP here in Oz, and are in the process of building a much needed submarine cable between Sydney and Guam. I’ve met with Bob, their Network Architect and he told me about some pretty crazy and cool stuff that they are doing, and it looks like the project is going to be a huge success for them.

They have decided, rather unusually for such a project, to be very open and transparent about how they are going about it, and you can find lots of details over on their website which includes a blog that you can subscribe to in order to stay up to date with the project!

For a very long time, I have longed for a decent to-do list. Better again, one that was online, allowing me to access it from anywhere. I’ve tried out a few different solutions over the years, but none have really worked for me.

Today, I discovered Remember The Milk, a very cool, Australian developed website, that is rapidly growing in popularity and features. There are currently over 500,000 users of RTM, so I’m guessing with those kind of numbers, there must be something exciting going on!

So far, I’m very impressed, I can hook it into my Google Calendar, allowing me to view as well as create tasks there, as well as create tasks via email and the web etc. Only thing that I would like to see is a Google Desktop plugin, but, I think I’m going to be hooked regardless!

I now work in a predominately MS Windows environment. Yes, I still have UNIX servers to look after, and Cisco kit all around the country to play with, but, most of the users here are Windows users. To that end, I’m currently install Windows Vista on my laptop! The thought of doing that makes me shudder a little, I’ve heard nothing but bad about Vista, and, given I haven’t used Windows hands on as my main OS in about 5 years, I’m not looking forward to figuring out all the bugs and problems that I encounter! Hopefully I can at least use my experiences to make migrating any users here to Vista a lot easier.

If you have been having problems with installing cacti on ubuntu like I just have, this little pointer should help.

There is a bug in the current cacti package that’s sitting in the gutsy mirrors, which will result in you getting the following helpful (not!) errors when you go to log in:

Invalid PHP_SELF Path

This applies to both fresh installs and OS upgrades also.

To work around this, you will need to downgrade to a working package:

sudo aptitude install cacti=0.8.6j-1.1

That should do the trick, until the mirrors are updated with a working version

I’ve just had this pointed out to me! Somewhat strange irony (and if you’re not a geek, you won’t get it!)

daragh@leffe:~$ whois as666

OrgName: US Army Combat Systems Test Activity
OrgID: UACSTA
Address: Commander, USACSTA
City: Aberdeen Proving Ground
StateProv: MD
PostalCode:
Country: US

ASNumber: 666
ASName: CSTA-CISCO-AS
ASHandle: AS666