Synchronizing time of Windows Server 2003

Before, in my plain old WinXP machine, there was a special tab in Date/Time settings for time synchronization with external time server. On Win Server 2003 it is not present any more. Some people say that this tab appears after some time, but it didn't work for me...

Finally, I was able to configure the time synchronization. This ans this links were helpful.

Mano disertacija

Wow, pagalaiu mano disertacijos pagrindiniai darbai užbaigti. Pažiūrėti į mano 4+ metų darbo rezultatus galima čia. Puslapis angliškas, bet pati disertacija parašyta lietuviškai.

Kartais net nesitiki, kad tai jau gali gretiai pasibagti... bet pasibaigti turėtų. Ginimas paskirtas 2008 m. sausio 25 d. Palinkėkit man sekmės.

ParSol - C++ library for semiautomatic parallelization

First of all: it's been a looOoong time since my last post. But I'm in a last days of finishing my PhD paper, so I believe I can be excused. People of all the Earth, pray for me :)

Now to the topic - finally, the result of my 4 year effort of doctoral studies went online. This is a C++ library for semiautomatic parallelization of data parallel algorithms, also suitable for parallelizing of iterative solvers of systems of linear equations. The efficient sequential code may also be produced using this library.

The library itself may be found here. Welcome to check it out!!!

pthreads-win32 DevPak installer for Dev-C++

After successful installation and usage of pthreads-win32 in my mingw32 projects, I've decided to automate this process. The result is DevPak installation package that will add pthreads functionality to your Dev-C++ installation in seconds.

The package may be downloaded directly from here, or, if you want to read more about it before downloading, from here. Currently, there's no package to get via webupdate, but I hope this is a synchronization issue and will be resolved in due time.

After installation, you may (try to) compile your pthreads dependent programs (the ones that use ). During linking, add -lpthreadGC2 option to the linker. This package contains version of pthreads-w32 that does NOT support thread stack unwinding after call to pthread_exit.

humyo vs. mydatabus - online file storage

I believe that online file storage has a future. There're many online file storage providers, however, choosing the right one is not a simple task. Of course, many things depend on what what you expect from online file storage. I'll tell you my experience. Here's what I look for:

• Free to use. I can live with adverts, and some sane restrictions on my free account. But it should be free and remain free. I am not a heavy online storage user, and I don't want one day to come and find out that my account and data are gone because I missed the payment.
• Plenty of storage. Well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? Now, when several GB account is not a miracle, this was the main reason why I dumped Microsoft's Live Drive, providing only 500MB per user.
• Web access. Almost everyone has it. Who hasn't, out of game for me.
• Security. These days, it is a must. That's why I look down upon services that use HTTP and FTP (otherwise excellent drivehq goes here). Also, this is the reason I don't look at such things as rapidshare. I just need another kind of service.
  
• Protocol support. Web access is fine... as a last resort. However, for a day-to-day life, I'd like my online storage to be mapped and conveniently accessible with my favorite file manager. And I use both windows and Linux machines. Solution - to support standard protocols, such as FTP/SFTP/FTPS/WebDAV/..., or at least provide some proprietary way to accomplish this task (but proprietary solutions usually support Windows only, as for xdrive).
• Other bells and whistles. Lots of stuff goes here. It is user experience, direct web download, sending file my mail, direct links to files, and so on.

Until now, I was a sole mydatabus user. It was not the perfect solution for me, but, summing up all the pros and cons, this was the best I could get. I used it for online file storage and synchronization, leaving image galleries to picasa, windows backup to mozy, and quick sharing of small files to googlepages. Now, a new player appeared on my horizon - humyo. Here is my opinion of it.

• The name of the game. While mydatabus brings some associations with file storage, humyo associates with noting. Absolutely nothing. But this is the matter to get used to, I believe (like google).
  
• Storage, filesize and bandwidth. This was the thing that caught my attention. While mydatabus gives its users 5GB of storage, 250MB max file size and 1GB/day bandwidth for shared files, the parameters for humyo are unlimited, unlimited, unlimited, in respective order. To be honest, traffic of 1GB/day is something I'd probably never reach in the foreseen future, and I didn't fill up my 5GB yet (but it is just a matter of time). But the 250MB restriction annoys me from time to time (not often, though).
• Business model. To put it in another words, is this service going to stay the same in the foreseen future, or it may disappear tomorrow? While I can't say for sure, at least I understand mydatabus. They have ads, they have premium accounts. They use Amazon S3 for storage, it is cheap and going to stay for long. I see things going on there, new features are added, technical support is operating. Also, I see more and more restrictions appearing on free account. However, humyo is a dark horse here. They say about some unlimited storage, but I'm afraid to believe such thing from a company nobody knows. They say about selling some premium accounts... hm, maybe, but with all the unlimited stuff they offer, why should many people need one? They don't even have ads...
• Web interface. Both are pretty good, both are heavy javascripted. Mydatabus has more bells and whistles (which I don't use, to be honest), but humyo works faster on opera (my observation). One thing that annoys me on humyo - it is difficult to see long file names, especially.if.they.don't.contain.spaces. Hint windows as in mydatabus could be superb.
• Security. humyo is a winner here, whith its full https support. mydatabus supports https for login page only. Still better than nothing...
• File access. In mydatabus, if my file is not shared, only I (and mydatabus) has access to it. In humyo, I was pretty sure about the same, until I tried to search for some file and found files that I didn't have. I wonder, if others can do the same thing on all my files? That would be VERY bad. Also, in mydatabus I have a place where I can see all my shared files, and manage them. I'd like to have something like that in humyo VERY MUCH.
  
• Protocol support. Both suck here. Both promise to have something. While support in mydatabus told me about their consideration for some open standards, humyo says something about a proprietary solution for windows only. That would be a minus, on my opinion.
• File upload. humyo is a winner here, by all means. The absence of restrictions and file drag and drop support in java version just rock. Some things I've noticed:
  1. ETA could be shown in upload window of java applet
  2. When uploading files, is it via http or via https? I want my security!!! (it is https in mydatabase/s3, by the way)
  3. When java is uanavailable, there could still be support for uploading several files at once, not only one.
• Direct links. Both have it in one way or another. Both have it rather difficult.
  
• Other stuff. Both have direct web upload. mydatabus has file e-mail feature, and humyo does not. That is the one that I use. The upload/download/connection speeds are fine in both, didn't measured them up.
  

So, what is the conlusion? I didn't find out all the details of humyo, but it seems very promising, and even superb to mydatabus, especially if some features could be added. But until it proves to be commercially stable in the long run, i'd be afraid to trust in it completely.

Computer people - greatest sadomazo's?

What is sadomasochism? It is when one person likes to inflict pain, and another - to suffer it. How far can it go? Well, when one wants to torture to death, and another wants to be killed that way... Bizarre how it seems, it is not completely out of place, alas.

When speaking about such cases, two of them come to mind, at least. One of them is the case of German cannibal Armin Meiwes, who ate his sweetheart Bernd Juergen Brandes in 2001, on mutual agreement. Another one is the case of Sharon Lopatka. She looked hard for someone to kill her in a painful way, and, finally, Robert Frederick Glass made her dreams come true in 1996.

What struck me in those cases? Well, let's see what those people were:

Armin Meiwes

computer technician

Bernd Juergen Brandes

computer software engineer, worked for Siemens in Berlin

Sharon Lopatka

Internet entrepreneur, website owner

Robert Frederick Glass

computer analyst who worked for the Catawba County, North Carolina, government. He was a productive worker who was responsible for programming tax rolls and keeping track of the gas consumption of county vehicles

See any trends? Being a software engineer working in computer industry myself, I do. Surely, in both cases people found each other on internet, but internet is not just for programmers, is it?

Mano baitai

Šiandien mane aplankė mūza :) Taigi:

RAM'o baitai buvo du,
Vienas dingo - nerandu.
Man su vienu baituku
Kompas stabdo - negaliu.

Tarp procesų ieškau šudo,
Mano rankos tai nužudo.
Vistiek stabdo kompas mano -
Vistai reikia daugiau RAMo...