Ubuntu, your HDD, hearing sounds, hdparm, usability and secretaries

I've installed kubuntu on my laptop, planning to replace XP with it, no more windows poo, if kubuntu or any linux for that matter, ain't working I'm Steve's Jobs guys for good (*cringe*).

However, due to the way ubuntu is configuring (or not configuring) your HDD power management settings, I am hearing every few seconds a strange sound coming from the HDD, something like a de-click. It's like it would stop every 5 seconds or stop every 5 seconds and then start again.

After some googling and foruming (back again to the OS hacker's life, when you were installing and reinstalling windows 98 (faint !) drivers every night in your lousy student life) I found that the issue could be the aggressive power management saving policy. For the hard disk here's how you tell it to save the least, thus not stopping it at all or something, the explanations are a bit fuzzy:

hdparm -B 254 /dev/hda

And then the sound stopped. I guess this means it will smack the battery but I don't care I'm using it as a mostly desktop system anyway.

In other words I am not saying that Ubuntu is far from windows usability but still, imagine your secretary running something called hdparm in the console. Well not that they'd be able to detect strange hard disk sounds either, until it's smoked !

Otherwise I'm quite happy with kubuntu, Java, Eclipse, Tomcat they all running like a breeze. Surprisingly kubuntu's UI is quite nice, with one annoying inconsistency, I've set the general system font to size 7 but still in Eclipse's editor it's a lot bigger, I wonder how am I going to fix that.

And I still need to get the sound working, I have no clue on how to install/get/replace the driver for it but somehow I feel that these days I am going to meet a smart-ass who's going to tell me how to do it and then laugh at me.

Manipulating petabytes of data

Have you ever asked yourself what would you do if you'd need to do it ?

Here are some useful links:

• HadoopDB - http://db.cs.yale.edu/hadoopdb/hadoopdb.html (free/OS)
• Hadoop + Hive http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=89508453919 (free/OS)
• Cloudera (UPDATE) - Hadoop based
  
• Greenplum - http://www.greenplum.com/ (paid)
• Teradata - http://www.teradata.com/t/ (paid)
• Asterdata nCluster - http://www.asterdata.com/product/index.php (paid)
• DATAllegro - http://www.datallegro.com/v3/index.asp (it's M$)
• Vertica - http://www.vertica.com/enterprise-data-warehouse (paid)
• Netezza - http://www.netezza.com/data-warehouse-appliance-products/index.aspx (paid)

Feel free to add to the list if you feel like it. It crossed my mind that JBOSS hasn't announced such a product. It's about time isn't it ? :-D

The Google Android vs iPhone bet

Here's my bet with Radu of the Eloquentix fame, on Google Android vs "iPhone 3,4,5 G, XPDU kaboom big badaboom":

In 2 years not only that iPhone will become obsolete, it will own the same market share that MAC has. And not only that, but it's "quality" will become a true legend. As Apple switched from the big mighty rocket science processor to Intel ones, I am waiting for the day they will run their iPhones on Google Android :-D, forced by this shit some people call "market".

And so, The iPhone will be nothing more than an excellent design powered by decent quality, while Android enabled phones will benefit from the unstoppable inovation comming from Google AND the herd that belives in these two words: "open *whatever*". I am only waiting for the terminal (HTC Hero may be the one, I only wish it was cheaper) that will be able to create the momentum needed for the vendors to say: This Android thing really has potential. We loose if we don't exploit that market. And that is the "bye bye iPhone moment". (Hear me Sony? Wake up you Playstation XYZ pimps. You want your playstation on mobile? The answer is Google Android). I've bet before but this is the first public bet I make. Let's see how it turns out.

Here Radu, just post a comment here and we have a bet. The stakes is the latest iPhone 3GPdBHboom badaboom (I buy you) available in 2 years from now on (6 July 2011) vs the latest equivalent price Android enabled phone (you buy me) and I get to choose which one as there will be plenty :-D. Who looses the bet, buys.