Category: Kev’s Blog

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Microsoft offering Linux VMs on it’s Azure service? What?! Did Hell Freeze Over?

When a company as large as Microsoft makes a u-turn on it’s product strategy, you know trends are changing, and Microsoft realized it was heading off in the wrong direction. Last week they announced that their Azure cloud service will now offer support for Linux VMs, offering an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud offering running your choice of OpenSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Ubuntu or CentOS Linux flavors.

Given Microsoft’s past efforts to squash the rising popularity of Linux, with the millions of dollars it pumped into SCO’s legal actions against Linux backers, and Ballmer’s memorable ‘Linux is a cancer’ statements describing with no uncertainty his deep hatred for Linux, last week’s announcement seems rather startling. What? Microsoft are offering  a commercial service to host Linux for paying customers? If there isn’t a single action that shows you how successful Linux is in our current world, then Microsoft making a u-turn of this degree is surely it.

If Microsoft’s Azure service is going to be successful, it makes complete sense that they have to offer Linux options for an IaaS offering, especially if they’re aiming to get a slice of Amazon’s AWS popularity.

I wonder what it was like to be in the meetings at Microsoft when they were planning this move?

“Steve – about this Linux thing. You know, if we’re going to stay alive and keep competitive, we really need to stop being an ass about Linux. It’s time to admit that it’s stomping all over our turf. Windows just doesn’t cut it any more in comparison to running systems on Linux. To stay in the game we need to start embracing this thing – let’s start by offering support in Azure and hosting Linux VMs…”

🙂

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ruby gem error: “ERROR: While executing gem … (ConcurrencyError)”

On Windows 7 running ‘gem install [gem name]” I was getting this cryptic error:

ERROR:  While executing gem … (ConcurrencyError)
Detected invalid array contents due to unsynchronized modifications with concurrent users

The only post I found that mentions this exact error was in the comments for this post about Neo4j on Ruby, and specifically getting this error with jruby 1.6.0.-RC2. I was using 1.6.0-RC1. I downloaded the latest version (1.6.7.2) and replaced my older version, and that fixed it.

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Managing SSH keys on Heroku

Heroku uses Git for your code repo, and therefore uses SSH to talk to the remote server. If you’re already using an SSH keypair for another repo or elsewhere, you may have to explicitly manage which of your key’s you want to use to access Heroku.

To list your current keys you’ve shared with Heroku:

heroku keys

To add a new key – run this from your ~/.ssh/ dir:

heroku keys:add keyfilename (e.g. rsa_id.pub)

If you get this error:

Fingerprint already exists. Please use one SSH key per Heroku account

… it’s because you’ve already used this SSH key with another account.

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Is Zuckerberg’s hoodie really ‘a mark of immaturity’?

An industry analyst who recently met with Zuckerberg about investment plans in Facebook stated that he thought Zuckerberg’s trademark hoodie is ‘a mark of immaturity’, implying that he should have been more suitably dressed for the business meeting.

Over on Google+, Robert Scoble posted about the analyst’s comment, which unleashed the most active community discussion that I’ve ever seen on G+ as a result of a single post. Opinions ranged wildly, but the activity in the discussion proves the absurdity and out of date thinking behind the expectation that professional business atire should be nothing other than suit, shirt and tie.

Times change, fashions change. The suit in today’s world is an absurd form of clothing. It has no practical benefits and is purely for show. This is my key issue – I don’t see how a suit is relevant in today’s world (in the software development world that I live in, at least) – wearing a suit does not make anyone a better software developer. It does not gift the developer with magical coding skills. It’s purely for show.

The popular saying ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ hits the nail on the head with this issue. Wearing a suit is nothing more than a cover on a book. As the other expression goes, ‘first impressions count’, but the fact is, once you’ve got beyond that faux outer layer to discover the contents of the person that has wrapped themselves in fancy, overpriced fabrics, it’s hard to hide the facts without the flashy threads. In software development, you can either code or you can’t. You either gel with the team, or you don’t. You perform or you don’t. Each of these have varying levels of degree, but the key point is this: a suit is nothing more than fancy plumage. Remove the outer shell and show me what you’ve got.

There’s some awesome comments to Scoble’s post that capture my thoughts entirely, that I’d like to quote here that make the point perfectly:

"wearing a tie doesn't make you money, not unless you sell ties"
"If you need to wear a costume to play out your roles, you should 
have become an actor or actress long ago"
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