τεχνολογία (technology)

Surely you didn't expect my blog to find out that Steve Jobs has past away. I just want to write a couple of words about a man that surely influenced the world of computers and information technology.

I am not a a big fan (or a fan at all) of Apple products. I don't know why, maybe I hated the passion about Apple products that all Apple fanboys had. I never liked the "have you seen how this is done in my Mac?" when they compared their Mac computer or Mac OS with Windows and PC. I always hated the line of i- products (iPhone, iPad, iTune, all this i- shit). Maybe I was jealous, who knows?

But one thing is for sure: You can think of Steve Jobs of a man who literally wrote history. He was one of the first to build a personal computer, a device that provided (maybe limited, but at the time, who else provided any of that) possibilities of large computers in a package built for home users. His vision was surely way ahead from others' and that's why he succeeded in doing what he loved to do.

A great man died. R.I.P. Steve, you are now relieved from your illness.

You can always watch the movie "The Pirates of Sillicon Valley", that describes the course of Apple/Steve Jobs and Microsoft/Bill Gates. I don't know its rate of credibility, but it's always nice to watch.

Sometimes, the question "Which FOSS DBMS to use for my application, MySQL or PostgreSQL?" arises in forum topics, mailing lists, blogs, etc. The answer is not as simple as the question itself and I won't try to answer it here. Instead, I will stand at an issue that arises from the answers given by various people.

It's been a while since my last benchmarks for some of the most widely used and known Linux filesystems and I think it's time to refresh them. This time, I've added ext4, which was marked stable since Linux 2.6.28 (the previous benchmarks were based on 2.6.26). Take a look at the attached file, in the first two pages, you will find information regarding my system setup, which was the basis for the new benchmarks.

Of course, any comments are always welcome. I wish you a good reading.

Update: Thanks to user Xerion at ADSLgr.com, I've attached a new PDF file, that was exported without the PDF/A-1a option checked in Openoffice.org, which had a verified bug (and fixed in version 3.2) with this option checked. This bug affected some PDF readers (like Adobe Acrobat), but not others (Evince, Okular, etc.). Thanks for the notification Xerion!

As the title says. Today, Qiang released v.1.0.8 of Yii as he announced a few days back. This version finally comes with a completed Greek translation of the core messages used by the framework, so with a minor configuration tuning, you can see the messages in Greek.

You can grab the source and the documentation here.

I hope I did a good job with the translation, but in case you see something that you don't like or think you have a better translation, don't hesitate to contact me.

Όσοι δεν γνωρίζετε το Google Street View, είναι ευκαιρία να το δείτε. Είναι μια υπηρεσία του Google, που σε συνδυασμό με το Google Maps, σας παρέχει εικονική περιήγηση σε διάφορες πόλεις του κόσμου, με φωτογραφίες υψηλής (σχετικά) ποιότητας. Η περιήγηση γίνεται ακριβώς όπως αν βρισκόσασταν σε ένα αυτοκίνητο και γυρνούσατε μέσα σε μια πόλη. Ό,τι θα βλέπατε αν είσασταν εκεί, το βλέπετε μέσω του Street View. Για το σκοπό αυτό, το Google χρησιμοποιεί αυτοκίνητα που φωτογραφίζουν καθώς περνούν μέσα από τις πόλεις και συνθέτει τις φωτογραφίες σε πανοραμικά πλάνα.

Είναι ομολογουμένως μια έξυπνη ιδέα, που δεν έχει πολύ καιρό που την έμαθα από γνωστούς και σου παρέχει ένα είδος περιηγητή σε πολλές πχ. ευρωπαϊκές πόλεις (που είναι και πιο κοντά μας). Θέλεις να πας ταξίδι σε μια πόλη; Μπαίνεις στο Street View και έχεις ένα preview του τι θα δεις.