Saturday's WTF: Hadoop certification for coffee grinders

This one just jumped on me out of nowhere

Now, W(here)TF is Cloudera? Don't they have any idea how to fix coffee grinders?

LaTeX is cool and easy

Well, last week I was working on a document that needed to be neatly formatted and I didn't want to go with the usual chores with WISIVIG environment. Yes, I am a big fan of OpenOffice, but these guys have some drawbacks when it gets to the accurate representation of your work once printed.

Anyway, I decided to give LaTeX a try. I've been avoiding this thing since my time in the grad school: I thought it is crazy. a mess and hard to learn. Well, either I got much smarter in the last 20 years or Mr. Knuth is an incredibly clever person, or likely the both ;)

It took me about twenty minutes to get everything installed and running (thank you Ubuntu for packaging up TexMaker!) and the draft version of my paper neatly formatted. Well, I have spent another two hours polishing it to where I finally liked it, but this is beyond the point - I have high standards :)

Did I fell in love with Tex? No, I don't think so, but it turned out that programming your papers is fun and let you have a professional looking documents with ease.

HortonWorks distribution: secretly powered by iTest and BigTop?

As I've mentioned here, and here BigTop is a real neat concept that I and a couple of my friends have put together a couple of years ago. Interestingly enough, second incarnation of the concept (known as iTest) made (back then) my manager to accusing me of stealing software in favor of ASF, followed by forceful departure from Cloudera (kick in the ass, with 'I am sorry' kinda smile on their face). But this all this in the past. The present however is much more interesting...

Some evidences were found that BigTop project (see first two links above) is seen as a power behind commercial offerings of some of the leading Hadoop vendors. Here how interesting it gets:

• you can get HortonWorks' stack AMI from this link to play with and learn about Hadoop and stuff.

• now let's see what they are using to power-up their distro

$ grep -i bigtop install_oozie.sh:     --extra-dir=DIR    path to Bigtop distribution files
install_oozie.sh:     --build-dir=DIR    path to Bigtop distribution files
install_oozie.sh:if [ -e /usr/libexec/bigtop-detect-javahome ]; then
install_oozie.sh:  . /usr/libexec/bigtop-detect-javahome
install_oozie.sh:elif [ -e /usr/lib/bigtop-utils/bigtop-detect-javahome ]; then
install_oozie.sh:  . /usr/lib/bigtop-utils/bigtop-detect-javahome
oozie.init:if [ -e /usr/libexec/bigtop-detect-javahome ]; then
oozie.init:  . /usr/libexec/bigtop-detect-javahome
oozie.init:elif [ -e /usr/lib/bigtop-utils/bigtop-detect-javahome ]; then
oozie.init:  . /usr/lib/bigtop-utils/bigtop-detect-javahome
oozie.spec:#Requires: bigtop-utils

now if you look a bit further, there some more hints that BigTop has been used big time, but that hasn't been hidden away very well...

oozie.init:if [ -e /usr/libexec/bigtop-detect-javahome ]; then
oozie.spec:#Requires: bigtop-utils

Wow, I feel proud, guys, I really am. Now I can officially claim that my ideas are giving the push to some of the biggest vendors of what is considered the hottest technology on the market ;) Although, they are unlikely to admit this publicly, predicating on the above example.

I will keep you posted on the development.

First ever Hadoop 1.0 open-source data analysis stack is out!

Basically, that says it all: BigTop 0.3 release is out as I've written in the blog. This is the major step in BigTop evolution and a very significant step in advancing open-source data analytics stack on top of Hadoop. Now people, enterprises and alike can have a Hadoop's big data stack that is reliable and fully validated for compatibility.

Why bother, you might say? Well, the biggest thing, of course, is that it is 100%, genuine open-source product. If you decided to go with it you'll prevent your business from vendor lock-in, which is always possible when you go with a commercial providers

[boilerplate to put the name of your favorite vendor in here]  

So, go ahead, configure the BigTop's packages repository for your Linux distribution of choice and enjoy the mighty Hadoop stack!

Don't ask questions or an ebay seller will block you

I am sure someone will find it funny. It is a bit longish read - 2 minutes or so, but it might save some one a few hundred dollars, thus it might well worth it.

I've looking for a while to get myself new X220 and I found an interesting seller called newthinkpads with a great deal on exactly what I was looking for. The seller looks great too: 99.7% of positive feedback and all that.

Before clicking "Buy now" button I've re-read the description once again and found some discrepancies. Naturally, when you are about to slice up $1500 bucks you want to make sure you get what you're paying for, so I've sent them a polite message:

This tablet isn't convertible, is it? The picture shows convertible model but the number is X220 which isn't. Kinda misleading information ;(

The response was a bit abrupt

newthinkpads> The item is exactly as stated in the listing.    

So, I've pressed a bit more

So, it is convertible then? Please confirm.
Also, in the description it says  Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205N WiFiBut in the Addition information section is states that:  Network Card 10/100/1000 + Wireless (802.11a/b/g/n)So which one it is after all? 

And got a response which send me wondering

newthinkpads> Sorry I am familiar with your terminology and no customer has ever asked us this before as our listing matching Lenovo website exactly.   

I wanted to explain as simple as possible

Sorry, I will make it simplier for you if Lenovo's term "convertible" is too hard to grasp:can I swivel the monitor of this model once opened? Or it is only can be opened and closed?
As for the network card: you display two _different_ network cards in your ad. Lenovo allows to have one or another - not both.

Are you deliberately not answering my questions? How you expect me to buy a computer when I don't even know what I am buying because of the confusing information from your store? 

And got the link to a completely different model from Lenovo website

newthinkpads> This is the item we are selling, but with slightly different specs so you can just compare: 
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/builder.workflow:Enter?sb=:00000025:0000306D:&smid=329576204C9E42289967E79E0E7C9A2D  

So, I said "wait a second"

Ok, so what I see is that it is convertible and has
  4 GB DDR3 - 1333MHz (1 DIMM)
however, your ad says it's sold with 8GB. So, how much memory it has after all? 4 or 8 gigabytes?

And they called me an idiot

newthinkpads> It sounds like you are confused so perhaps ask a friend to walk you through the eBay listing.

So, I've called spades a spades

This is an insult! I have been doing computers for 25 years: building them
,repairing them and programming for them. And you call me being confused over
an apparent difference of 4 vs 8 Gb of memory in lenovo config vs yours?  WTF?
I think you need to fix your ads, fellas - they are highly inaccurate and
misleading.

I will try one last time. Could you please send me the Lenovo model number for
the laptop you're selling? It looks something like this "42962YU" or similar.
Hopefully, it isn't very hard for you wise kids

And they offered to be go and f*ck myself

newthinkpads> Now you are just added to our block list for being a problem
buyer so you cannot purchase or contact us again.  This is through the ebay
messaging system so if you reply the email will not be delivered to us.

WTF? I am a problem buyer? Since when a buyer has to be a silent victim without a right to ask questions? This is an interesting motto - sounds like a highway robbery to me: "Gimme your money and shut up!".

Hmm... may be after all I need to be thankful that they have locked me out because now I am not going to be defrauded? And I wonder how hard it is to massage yourself 6000+ positive feedback being a fraudster and an impolite jerk like that one? And sure I am not gonna send them another message - I will post it on the internet, where everyone can read it.

Well-formed stack...

in my garage. Now I am ready for coming summer

Updated version of elephants genealogy

The release manager of Hadoop 0.22 and my namesake Konstantin pointed out that my diagram has alignment problems. So, I have posted a latest version to the same post. Enjoy.