"OpenVZ is an Operating System-level server virtualization solution, built on Linux. OpenVZ creates isolated, secure virtual private servers (VPSs) or virtual environments on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict. Each VPS performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; VPSs can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files . . . The OpenVZ project is an open source community project supported by SWsoft and is intended to provide access to the code and ultimately for the open source community to test, develop and further the OS virtualization effort. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may evolve into the Virtuozzo product offering. We encourage the community to access, use, develop and comment on the software and references on this site."

Sounds like they're following RedHat's lead with the Fedora project. I see this as a win-win situation. The community gets some very nice virtualization software, and SWSoft gets the improvements that filter back up from the community. The RedHat "flavor" of Linux has only gotten better since the Fedora Project happened. Fedora Linux is leaps ahead of where RedHat left off with RH9. I hope the same happens with OpenVZ.

NewsForge also has a story on the release.

At work earlier today I started using del.icio.us to tag some interesting Perl Modules that I had found and wanted to remember. So I created some tags that I will start adding to the CPAN pages for all these modules I'm finding. Then I can simply go to del.icio.us/orbital_mechanic/perl_module and see a list of all the Perl Modules I want to remember.

What does del.icio.us have to do with building a topical guide to scriptures and talks? Well, tonight while reading through a talk, and being distracted for a moment to look something up on del.icio.us, my little brain that loves to form associations connected the two. I can use del.icio.us to build my topical guide! I can start tagging the urls of pages that contain conference talks, BYU speeches and references from scriptures.lds.org. Then to search my topical guide, I just do a del.icio.us lookup on the tag/topic in question. I love being able to tie things together in easy ways like this!

The only problem I see at this point is that del.icio.us only lets me use one word tags (space-delimited parsing), but I can think of several topics for which I'd want to use two words, such as "self reliance." Are there other social bookmarking sites out there that allow multi-word tags?

http://mashable.com/2006/01/12/inods-kritx-and-edge-of-the-network-reviews/

Until you've got the userbase of Amazon, any venture that expects the rest of the world to come and provide reviews and content for its site is going to be far behind those who are able to utilize what's already out there.

As techniques like structured blogging and microformats become more prevalent, aggregating this data in useful ways is going to get easier and easier. I like this way better as it allows me (the content/review producer) to maintain full control over my own content. This is the concept espoused by Steve Mallett in his datalibre efforts. He puts it very succinctly, "Own Your Data - Write Once, Read Everywhere"

Lets extend this idea to genealogy and family history sites. If all the Worldconnects, phpgedviews, and any genealaogy software that produces html pages from genealogy databases would start to add a genealogy microformat to their output, there are a lot of cool genealogical research tools that could be made to spider, aggregate, and merge that data. Sounds like a good presentation for this year's Famiy History Technology Conference.

A blog I've been tracking offers some tantalizing detail about the new system the LDS Church has been developing to hopefully reduce redundancy in genealogical research.

Here's to hoping my temple district is soon to try it out. From what I hear it's down the list a ways :-(.

As a sysadmin, I very much like scripts and tools that are idempotent. That is, no matter how many times I run them, they always move the system towards the desired end state. Once the system is in that desired end state, running the script has no further effect. This is the main concept espoused by cfengine, in which each run of the agent brings the system towards (but no further) than the state defined by the configuration.

This module is particularly useful for sysadmins writing scripts which execute a sequence of actions, each of which depends upon the successful execution of the previous action. It makes for much cleaner and almost declarative code, in that I can define the state each step needs to effectuate, and the code required to bring that state into being. Thus if you run your script and it dies on step 3 of 20, you can run it again, and it will recognize that steps 1 and 2 have already happened, and that it needs to try step 3 again and go from there. A good read through the module docs is highly recommended.

Reading this brings to mind the verse in the Doctrine and Covenants in which the church is foretold to "come forth out of obscurity and darkness." I believe that as the church continues to grow and become more and more visible, we'll see more of this kind of coverage. Not all of it will be as kind, I'm sure, but I think people are noticing the goodness in the lives of its members.

Sys::RunAlone - Ever written a script that you needed to ensure there was only ever one copy of it running?

    use Sys::RunAlone;
    ...
    __END__

Sys::RunAlone CPAN page.

Sys::RunUntil - Ever written a script that you only want to run for a specified amount of time, regardless of what it happens to be doing? Forget about forking and calling alarm(), etc. Just:

    use Sys::RunUntil '30mW';

    use Sys::RunUntil '30sC';

Sys::RunUntil CPAN page

Enjoy!

The church says it will likely be able to have all of its over 2 million microfilms digitized within 6 years.

One presentation of the three also talks about the church's plans for a new application which will provide a centralized repository of genealogical information, allowing collaborative research and concensus to arrive at better and more accurate information. Think of it as the Ancestral File updated to take full advantage of the Internet age.

Amazing stuff. I can't wait!