Obsolescence is a perpetual threat for techies. Five years ago, ZFS didn't even exist, two years ago I had never heard of it, 18 months ago I built it for the first time, and now it's the most exciting and important new development in my job. Not to mention one of the coolest things since the invention of the Linux kernel.
Ideally, each one of us would have a friend at Oracle, one at Microsoft, one at Apple, Google, and all these other places . As normal part of conversation, you could just ask your friends "What are you guys working on over there?" and you could get a sense for what cool new things are upcoming . Anyway, I'd just like to share some things that I have found to be "cool" in recent months, as well as ask folks to share anything they'd like. #1, as stated above, ZFS. The most versatile filesystem I've ever known. Instantly and dynamically expandable. Optimized or optimizable for every type of file IO possible (small/large, sync or async writes, and reads.) Automatic snapshotting, and awesomely efficient backups. And free. #2 Ubuntu. If your last exposure to Linux on laptops was several years ago, it's time to revisit. The installation is drop dead simple, but afterward, be sure to install the compiz-config-settings manager, and gnome-do. Both of which are not drop-dead simple to configure, just because you've got so many user preference checkboxes to choose from. Suddenly you've got the most powerful and flexible user interface I've ever seen, and again, free. Rock solid reliable. #3 Android. Although I don't own any android device, I downloaded the development kit (plugin to eclipse) and gave it a try. You wanna talk about impressive? It's impressive. I followed the instructions for "Hello World," and I was expecting some window that allows me to run android code inside of MS Windows, like the code would run inside android. But what I got when I clicked "Run" was an on-screen picture of a phone, complete with keypad, virtual accelerometer, virtual 3G connection, and so on. The virtual OS boots up, and has all the controls that you normally expect in your phone. And then my "Hello World" app appeared in the virtual phone screen. It's all free. It works in Linux, OSX, or Windows equally well. Now THAT is how you make a platform inviting to software developers. #4 Dropbox. The original idea, I think, was "synchronize a local directory to a server on the internet, live, instant, and always." But if you install it on more than one computer, you've got a directory that's live synced between any number of computers. You've got access to your files through a web interface if you want . You've got a subdirectory "public" that you can use to email large files to people for free if you want. You can create a subdirectory shared with a friend or a team of coworkers if you want. Live synced between all of you. #5 Cisco anyconnect VPN client. It goes across https instead of IPSec, which means you can traverse proxy servers while you're visiting a network that has locked down internet access. (Assuming they allow https.) No exceptions need to be created in your OS firewall. No reboot is necessary to install. No internal access is necessary in order to gain access to the installer. Just open a browser and go to https://yoursitename Login with your credentials, and the installer will download and install for future use. Works equally well on Linux, Windows, or OSX. Well, maybe not quite as simple on Linux, but it's available. I'll stop there, and invite others to also share whatever might be cool they'd like to tell people about.
_______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
