Intel is formally, though very quietly, supporting Linux on the desktop. MS must be pretty unhappy with them. Anyway, the details can be had at the link above.
My wife recently partitioned her laptop and installed SuSE 9.2, all by herself, which certainly shows that a user of average competance can now easily install Linux. Laptops used to pose special problems, but not any more. It may be that the time of Linux on desktops is come. It surely has in our home.
Jack
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Microsoft to Abandon Passwords in Longhorn?
Vnunet has an intriguing article quoting a Microsoft representative as saying that Longhorn will rely on some unspecified form of two factor authentication, rather than passwords.
The scheme is not detailed at all, but right away it raises questions like who will provide the database for authentication? Microsoft? I can hear the howls now from many quarters about entrusting MS with one's identity. The article makes the point (and I concur) that such authentication, whatever form it takes, has to be openly held and accessible from any and everywhere, lest myriad problems arise.
Still; passwords are rarely used well and something has to change. At least this will begin a (hopefully) constructive debate on the subject.
Jack
The scheme is not detailed at all, but right away it raises questions like who will provide the database for authentication? Microsoft? I can hear the howls now from many quarters about entrusting MS with one's identity. The article makes the point (and I concur) that such authentication, whatever form it takes, has to be openly held and accessible from any and everywhere, lest myriad problems arise.
Still; passwords are rarely used well and something has to change. At least this will begin a (hopefully) constructive debate on the subject.
Jack
SHA-1 Hash Flaw Draws Serious Industry Response
Last month, news reports that academic researchers in China had found a flaw in the widely used SHA-1 hashing algorithm raised a few eyebrows but quickly passed from the headlines.
Fast forward a month, and today's Wall Street Journal has a front page story about raising red flags over this story.
SHA-1 hashes a 160-bit "key" that was thought to be unique for each message. That would ensure a recipient, for instance, that an e-mail had not been tampered with. SHA-1 is widely used in Internet commerce (e.g., money) and in a number of authentication systems built into commercial products such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
What a difference a month makes. The Wall Street Journal story paints a different story from the initial blase reactions. Security specialists and product developers looked at the evidence from the Chinese research and found an exploitable flaw. The security industry will jettison SHA-1 as soon as it can -- and hope a hack that exploits the flaw dose not appear first.
Bottom Line: In this case, last month's smoke becomes this month's fire. The SHA-1 flaw is serious and deserves attention by vendors and enterprises which use it in their customer- and partner-facing applications.
The unstated fear is that the bad guys will find an unpublished flaw in some other critical Internet security feature, and create chaos through lack of trust in online commerce. Should the $20 billion Internet commerce market lose consumer and business confidence, it could crash overnight. Not my Cassandra scenario, mind you, but it's very sobering to realize that the world is coming to depend on fragile technology -- and may not know how large the risk is.
Peter S. Kastner
Fast forward a month, and today's Wall Street Journal has a front page story about raising red flags over this story.
SHA-1 hashes a 160-bit "key" that was thought to be unique for each message. That would ensure a recipient, for instance, that an e-mail had not been tampered with. SHA-1 is widely used in Internet commerce (e.g., money) and in a number of authentication systems built into commercial products such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
What a difference a month makes. The Wall Street Journal story paints a different story from the initial blase reactions. Security specialists and product developers looked at the evidence from the Chinese research and found an exploitable flaw. The security industry will jettison SHA-1 as soon as it can -- and hope a hack that exploits the flaw dose not appear first.
Bottom Line: In this case, last month's smoke becomes this month's fire. The SHA-1 flaw is serious and deserves attention by vendors and enterprises which use it in their customer- and partner-facing applications.
The unstated fear is that the bad guys will find an unpublished flaw in some other critical Internet security feature, and create chaos through lack of trust in online commerce. Should the $20 billion Internet commerce market lose consumer and business confidence, it could crash overnight. Not my Cassandra scenario, mind you, but it's very sobering to realize that the world is coming to depend on fragile technology -- and may not know how large the risk is.
Peter S. Kastner
Open Source Servers is a Dumb Idea
Timothy Prickett Morgan is a writer and analyst whom I usually respect. He is off base with a proposal to rid the world of proprietary servers and replace them with Open Source Servers.
Morgan writes, "IT vendors are in the business of selling what are still largely point solutions to customers who have holistic problems that include myriad legacy systems. The vendors and the consumers of servers, in particular, have been at odds with each other from the beginning. The vendors control the introduction, maturation, and death of any technology in the servers they control, often to the chagrin of their customers.
There is another way to make and support servers, one that is more flexible, yet allows companies to absorb change in the way they want to, not the way that vendors want them to."
What Morgan wants is a myriad of interchangeability standards that would allow enterprises to allow -- well, there is no other way to put it -- do-it-yourself (DIY) servers. I agree it is sometimes frustrating to be unable to plug an IBM Power server into an HP rack, or have to pay a big price for the sheet metal and screws on hot-plug disk drives. But that's the way the industry works -- and has always worked.
No New News
First, Morgan is wrong. Open Source hardware has been around in many variations for years. You can go to Tyan or any number of Taiwan server-motherboard makers and buy the features you want. Exactly like a DIY desktop PC. Enterprises can easily negotiate with the Taiwanese or Chinese to procure disk drive enclosures, racks, and all the things Morgan rants about. But, gee, that would mean having F1000 enterprises designing their own variation on Open Source computers. I trust at least a few CEOs will decide that computer design and on-site assembly is not the core competency of most enterprises (and certainly not the government). On the other hand, resellers have supported the small- medium-business market this way for years with OEM parts they assemble.
Peter's "Make a Buck" Argument
CIOs for years have had the delusion they should receive the low -- as in free -- price of open source software. They just expect the free software to come with enterprise-class support on a 24x7 basis. What is wrong with this thinking? Software and Morgan's target hardware companies have to mark up the products they sell to cover the support and warranty they provide. They also are expected by shareholders to make a profit. All those on-site vendor pre-sales calls to help scope the project requirements get added into the gross margin needed on disk drives enclosures. And almost all enterprises need that support and help, whether it is a paid service or built into the price of the server rack.
Open source Enterprise Won't Fly
Sorry, Timothy Prickett Morgan, your idea won't fly in the real world of enterprise computing. The choice to do open source has been there for a decade in many ways and the market has spoken with a resounding "no thanks". Enterprises may grumble and groan about prices, but they keep paying and paying. In fact, when faced with the end of a hardware platform (think HP 3000), they roar with displeasure.
Peter S. Kastner
Morgan writes, "IT vendors are in the business of selling what are still largely point solutions to customers who have holistic problems that include myriad legacy systems. The vendors and the consumers of servers, in particular, have been at odds with each other from the beginning. The vendors control the introduction, maturation, and death of any technology in the servers they control, often to the chagrin of their customers.
There is another way to make and support servers, one that is more flexible, yet allows companies to absorb change in the way they want to, not the way that vendors want them to."
What Morgan wants is a myriad of interchangeability standards that would allow enterprises to allow -- well, there is no other way to put it -- do-it-yourself (DIY) servers. I agree it is sometimes frustrating to be unable to plug an IBM Power server into an HP rack, or have to pay a big price for the sheet metal and screws on hot-plug disk drives. But that's the way the industry works -- and has always worked.
No New News
First, Morgan is wrong. Open Source hardware has been around in many variations for years. You can go to Tyan or any number of Taiwan server-motherboard makers and buy the features you want. Exactly like a DIY desktop PC. Enterprises can easily negotiate with the Taiwanese or Chinese to procure disk drive enclosures, racks, and all the things Morgan rants about. But, gee, that would mean having F1000 enterprises designing their own variation on Open Source computers. I trust at least a few CEOs will decide that computer design and on-site assembly is not the core competency of most enterprises (and certainly not the government). On the other hand, resellers have supported the small- medium-business market this way for years with OEM parts they assemble.
Peter's "Make a Buck" Argument
CIOs for years have had the delusion they should receive the low -- as in free -- price of open source software. They just expect the free software to come with enterprise-class support on a 24x7 basis. What is wrong with this thinking? Software and Morgan's target hardware companies have to mark up the products they sell to cover the support and warranty they provide. They also are expected by shareholders to make a profit. All those on-site vendor pre-sales calls to help scope the project requirements get added into the gross margin needed on disk drives enclosures. And almost all enterprises need that support and help, whether it is a paid service or built into the price of the server rack.
Open source Enterprise Won't Fly
Sorry, Timothy Prickett Morgan, your idea won't fly in the real world of enterprise computing. The choice to do open source has been there for a decade in many ways and the market has spoken with a resounding "no thanks". Enterprises may grumble and groan about prices, but they keep paying and paying. In fact, when faced with the end of a hardware platform (think HP 3000), they roar with displeasure.
Peter S. Kastner
Microsoft Converges Business Solutions Business
"At its Convergence 2005 conference in San Diego last week, Microsoft unveiled its ERP product roadmap, including details of its "Project Green" initiative to gradually unite the five core products sold through its Microsoft Business Solutions (MOBS) division. Project Green will be delivered across two waves, the first of which has already begun. Microsoft also announced a new five-year support policy for all MOBS products, replacing the previous three-year support policy."
Microsoft as a whole set revenue and profit records for the last quarter, but the MOBS segment grew revenues only five percent, to $206 million, and its net loss grew to $23 million -- a loss approaching 10% of sales. This is obviously a disappointment for Microsoft, which trails predictions it would leverage Great Plains, Navision, Solomon, retail POS, and CRM applications into a juggernaut to challenge SAP and Oracle applications -- at least in the mid-market.
Convergence will (eventually) cut costs because fewer support resources will be needed five-plus years from now. More importantly, Microsoft needs to rationalize its sales channel: five products now use five channels to go to market. This is not efficient for Microsoft or for the resellers who are competing at the local level.
Bottom Line: Will not help customers, channel partners, or Microsoft any time soon. But it's the right thing to do in the long run. Potential customers will have to consider a migration somewhere down the road -- but Microsoft is not alone with the prospect of migrations down the road!
Peter S. Kastner
Microsoft as a whole set revenue and profit records for the last quarter, but the MOBS segment grew revenues only five percent, to $206 million, and its net loss grew to $23 million -- a loss approaching 10% of sales. This is obviously a disappointment for Microsoft, which trails predictions it would leverage Great Plains, Navision, Solomon, retail POS, and CRM applications into a juggernaut to challenge SAP and Oracle applications -- at least in the mid-market.
Convergence will (eventually) cut costs because fewer support resources will be needed five-plus years from now. More importantly, Microsoft needs to rationalize its sales channel: five products now use five channels to go to market. This is not efficient for Microsoft or for the resellers who are competing at the local level.
Bottom Line: Will not help customers, channel partners, or Microsoft any time soon. But it's the right thing to do in the long run. Potential customers will have to consider a migration somewhere down the road -- but Microsoft is not alone with the prospect of migrations down the road!
Peter S. Kastner
Monday, March 14, 2005
Microsoft Extends Office "Presence", Buys Groove
Anyone thinking Microsft's venerable Office suite is out of new features to add has missed the boat. Microsoft has an active -- and maybe visionary -- program to extend the concept of Office and workplace to remote, mobile, and disconnected workers. This is a long-term effort which Microsoft believes is strategic to its long-term growth and prosperity.
Last week, Microsoft purchased Groove, a Massachusetts company headed by Lotus Development luminary, Ray Ozzie. Ozzie will become one of three Microsoft "chief technology officers", working with chief architect Bill Gates.
Last week, Microsoft purchased Groove, a Massachusetts company headed by Lotus Development luminary, Ray Ozzie. Ozzie will become one of three Microsoft "chief technology officers", working with chief architect Bill Gates.
Groove's Virtual Office complements Microsoft's collaboration solution offerings:
- Real-time collaboration solutions such as Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005 and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server that enable in-the-moment one-to-one and one-to-many collaboration
- Server-based collaboration solutions such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services that allow businesses to create and manage collaborative work spaces online or on a company's internal IT system
- Peer-to-peer collaboration solutions through Groove's Virtual Office, which let any Windows-based PC user instantly create ad hoc, virtual work spaces that securely and easily span organizational, geographic and network boundaries, and allow information workers to be productive whether they're online or temporarily disconnected from the network.
Gates talked last week about "presence", the ability with forthcoming technology to instantly create the appropriate meeting environment for collaboration. E-mail, telephony, video conference, instant messaging -- all will tie together. Given Microsoft's strong push with this initiative into Voice Over IP (VoIP), we reiterate our prediction that VoIP is going to see enormous growth this year. On the other hand, Microsoft's technology will make it harder for workers to get private or personal time as instant meetings could be no more than a mouse click away.
Peter S. Kastner
Peter S. Kastner
Pi Day Gives Math Mavens Something to Celebrate
Take a little break from your manic Monday, geeks, and contemplate Pi and Einstein's birthday all rolled into one!
Storage: Show Me the Money
Market counter IDC reported last week "Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew slightly in the fourth quarter of 2004 (4Q04), posting just 1% growth over the same quarter one year ago to $3.8 billion, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. The total disk storage systems market grew at a slightly higher year-over-year rate of 1.8% in the fourth quarter, as internal storage revenues grew faster than external storage. Demand for disk storage systems capacity picked up considerably in the fourth quarter, however, resulting in 57.7% year-over-year growth in external disk storage systems petabytes. For the full year 2004, the external disk storage systems market posted 4.7% revenue growth over 2003 to $14.2 billion."
EMC and EMC partner Dell are growing fastest, while HP lost several market share points last year (see separate blog entry).
Where's the Money?
There is a real disconnect between the piddling 1% revenue growth noted by IDC and the widespread belief that storage growth is 40% - 50% a year. I believe growth is at the 40% - 50% a year range. My research last year at Aberdeen Group with F1000 users showed statistically significant results at the 40%+ level for planned gigabytes of enterprise storage added (e.g., datacenter, not desktop). To this add EMC CEO Joe Tucci's complaint to analysts last month that EMC could not get enough fibre channel disk drives to meet demand this quarter. And it's not just me: EMC states storage industry growth is 50%, so many smart people are drinking the 50% growth Koolaid.
The question I pose is this: since no one is suggesting that enterprise storage prices have declined 40% - 50% in the past year, how can revenues be up only 4.7 percent as IDC claims while gigabytes shipped is up over 40%? The arithmetic just does not work! One answer is that IT is budgeting and planning for 40% growth but buying far less -- 35% less growth than planned. Another could be a fundamental flaw in the methodology used by IDC (and others) which understates storage spending growth as a share of the entire server/storage/software/services pie.
I'd like the answer, please. Post your thoughts.
Peter S. Kastner
EMC and EMC partner Dell are growing fastest, while HP lost several market share points last year (see separate blog entry).
Where's the Money?
There is a real disconnect between the piddling 1% revenue growth noted by IDC and the widespread belief that storage growth is 40% - 50% a year. I believe growth is at the 40% - 50% a year range. My research last year at Aberdeen Group with F1000 users showed statistically significant results at the 40%+ level for planned gigabytes of enterprise storage added (e.g., datacenter, not desktop). To this add EMC CEO Joe Tucci's complaint to analysts last month that EMC could not get enough fibre channel disk drives to meet demand this quarter. And it's not just me: EMC states storage industry growth is 50%, so many smart people are drinking the 50% growth Koolaid.
The question I pose is this: since no one is suggesting that enterprise storage prices have declined 40% - 50% in the past year, how can revenues be up only 4.7 percent as IDC claims while gigabytes shipped is up over 40%? The arithmetic just does not work! One answer is that IT is budgeting and planning for 40% growth but buying far less -- 35% less growth than planned. Another could be a fundamental flaw in the methodology used by IDC (and others) which understates storage spending growth as a share of the entire server/storage/software/services pie.
I'd like the answer, please. Post your thoughts.
Peter S. Kastner
Privacy advocates frown on Amazon snooping plan
Anyone who has an Amazon.com account knows how their system works. If you are logged in, Amazon presents you will all kinds of "suggestions", based on your browsing and buying habits, that it thinks you might like to buy. Sometimes it is kind of spooky. Most of the time to me, it is wrong and annoying. I want to look at what I want to look at, and I don't want to be bombarded with a bunch of stuff related to things I bought in the past every time I log in.
While Amazon does give you the chance to fine tune the "suggestions" by deleting things, well, that's not my job or where I want to spend my time. I once bought a country music CD and for years Amazon must have thought that I really wanted to buy mass quantites of country music. Every time I went there, I got another "suggestion". My interests are so varied that no automated system can get it right, and Amazon's routinely gets it wrong.
Now this "suggestion" business may only get "better" with this new Amazon patented gift tracking system.
Amazon, listen! There are 2 useful features your tracking system gives me. One is keeping track of things I've looked at during a session (and no longer). That way if I'm comparing stuff I can easily find the things I've already scoped out. The other is when I put something in my shopping cart, Amazon offers me a deal on that and a related item I might want -- a possible savings. Possible savings are good, especially if I really want that other item -- I'm likely to buy.
I realize that other shoppers may have other needs. What Amazon really needs to do is let us, their customers, choose from their tracking features those which are useful and allow us to leave the others behind. The ones that are offensive to me personally, will actually cause me to spend less time at the Amazon site which means that I'm less likely to see something that I want to buy. I have never bought something from Amazon that I didn't want to buy before I went to the Amazon site. Perhaps I am atypical, but it is true.
After that rant, why do I even buy from Amazon? A couple of reasons. They often have good prices. They often have what I want in stock. They usually get the order right. When they get the order wrong, they have fixed the probem in a timely manner. There are so many things I like about Amazon, but it is possible to drive a loyal customer away if the browsing experience gets too spooky. What is described in this article is, in my opinion, spooky. Not to mention the child safety issues involved, which is a very huge concern.
So Amazon, please patent the "let the customer turn off the parts they don't like" buttons. And please, please go very carefully with this next step and its potential for child exploitation.
While Amazon does give you the chance to fine tune the "suggestions" by deleting things, well, that's not my job or where I want to spend my time. I once bought a country music CD and for years Amazon must have thought that I really wanted to buy mass quantites of country music. Every time I went there, I got another "suggestion". My interests are so varied that no automated system can get it right, and Amazon's routinely gets it wrong.
Now this "suggestion" business may only get "better" with this new Amazon patented gift tracking system.
Amazon, listen! There are 2 useful features your tracking system gives me. One is keeping track of things I've looked at during a session (and no longer). That way if I'm comparing stuff I can easily find the things I've already scoped out. The other is when I put something in my shopping cart, Amazon offers me a deal on that and a related item I might want -- a possible savings. Possible savings are good, especially if I really want that other item -- I'm likely to buy.
I realize that other shoppers may have other needs. What Amazon really needs to do is let us, their customers, choose from their tracking features those which are useful and allow us to leave the others behind. The ones that are offensive to me personally, will actually cause me to spend less time at the Amazon site which means that I'm less likely to see something that I want to buy. I have never bought something from Amazon that I didn't want to buy before I went to the Amazon site. Perhaps I am atypical, but it is true.
After that rant, why do I even buy from Amazon? A couple of reasons. They often have good prices. They often have what I want in stock. They usually get the order right. When they get the order wrong, they have fixed the probem in a timely manner. There are so many things I like about Amazon, but it is possible to drive a loyal customer away if the browsing experience gets too spooky. What is described in this article is, in my opinion, spooky. Not to mention the child safety issues involved, which is a very huge concern.
So Amazon, please patent the "let the customer turn off the parts they don't like" buttons. And please, please go very carefully with this next step and its potential for child exploitation.
Corel WordPerfect Gets Some Justice
Back in the late 1980s when word processing on a PC became de rigeur and companies like Wang and Data General began the long slide to oblivion, WordPerfect Corporation was the market share leader. WP could do an awful lot of page layout once you learned the secret codes that control text and paragraph attributes. The alternative was using very tedious and unfriendly programs with a graphics user interface like PageMaker on an Intel 286 16MHz processor. But as Windows and Microsoft Word rolled out in ever-improving versions from Redmond, WordPerfect lost share in the 1990s and was eventually sold off to Corel Software in Canada.
One of the strong vertical markets for WordPerfect was legal, primarily because WordPerfect listened to lawyers and did things like line numbering pleadings and making legal document formatting easy.
So it is with some justice (pun intended) that WordPerfect wins a 50,000 seat order at the Big Lawyer, the U.S. Department of Justice -- which respects the first amendment rights of bloggers should they be reading this. Corel bid $40 a seat per year for 5 years, plus services and training to bring the contract value to $13M. At one-third the bid price of Microsoft, the accountants at Justice saw a good deal.
Peter S. Kastner
One of the strong vertical markets for WordPerfect was legal, primarily because WordPerfect listened to lawyers and did things like line numbering pleadings and making legal document formatting easy.
So it is with some justice (pun intended) that WordPerfect wins a 50,000 seat order at the Big Lawyer, the U.S. Department of Justice -- which respects the first amendment rights of bloggers should they be reading this. Corel bid $40 a seat per year for 5 years, plus services and training to bring the contract value to $13M. At one-third the bid price of Microsoft, the accountants at Justice saw a good deal.
Peter S. Kastner
Is Google Quietly Leading a revolution in Open Web Programming?
Take a look at Google Suggest. Watch the way the suggested terms update as you type, almost instantly. Now look at Google Maps. Zoom in. Use your cursor to grab the map and scroll around a bit. Again, everything happens almost instantly, with no waiting for pages to reload. What's happening? This isn't your father's static web page circa 1996!
"Google Suggest and Google Maps are two examples of a new approach to web applications that James Garrett at Adaptive Path has been calling Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and it represents a fundamental shift in what’s possible on the Web.
Defining AjaxAjax isn’t a technology. It’s really combining several heretofore standalone, standards-based technologies together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:
The classic web application model works like this: Most user actions in the interface trigger an HTTP request back to a web server. The server does some processing — retrieving data, crunching numbers, talking to various legacy systems — and then returns an HTML page to the client. It’s a model adapted from the Web’s original use as a hypertext medium, but as readers of The Elements of User Experience know, what makes the Web good for hypertext doesn’t necessarily make it good for software applications.
Ajax Way
Instead of loading a webpage at the start of the session, the browser loads an Ajax engine — written in JavaScript and usually tucked away in a hidden frame. This engine is responsible for both rendering the interface the user sees and communicating with the server on the user’s behalf. The Ajax engine allows the user’s interaction with the application to happen asynchronously — independent of communication with the server. So the user is never staring at a blank browser window and an hourglass icon, waiting around for the server to do something."
Analysis
1. The architectural balance between "fat client" and "this client" continues in a yin-yang seesaw. Probalbly thus it will always be. The rush away from fat (e.g., client-server mid-1990s) clients to "thin" web clients with a mere sliver of HTML cum Java Script left many wide-area network users frustrated while the web-load bars slowly move from left to right. There are too many client-server interactions in the unpredictable web response time world to make the current thin client model last in a web services world.
With fast machines loafing along, it makes sense in the Ajax model to place more of the local work on the desktop (or laptop) so the user gets more rapid response to what they are looking for. Mousing to the place on the map and zooming in are a good example.
2. Interesting that Google is quietly playing with fire. They just throw this technology out there without so much as a press release, Larry Ellison would have a migraine if that happened at Oracle. The technology is a open as it gets, so it runs on all kinds of browsers -- a not so subtle jab at Microsoft's browser hegemony.
3. The more combinations of open technology take root, the lower the revenues of the software industry. Microsoft, IBM, Macromedia and a host of other software tool companies have much to lose when premier web sites like Google go pure-white with standards based code. And if Google can do it, so can General Motors and other technology-savvy enterprises.
4. You will add Ajax to your lexicon. Ajax will be a big deal in the world's development community inside six months.
5. This will drive the "premier supplier of janitorial and cleaning industries software" absolutely crazy. :-)
Peter S. Kastner
"Google Suggest and Google Maps are two examples of a new approach to web applications that James Garrett at Adaptive Path has been calling Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and it represents a fundamental shift in what’s possible on the Web.
Defining AjaxAjax isn’t a technology. It’s really combining several heretofore standalone, standards-based technologies together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:
- standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS; dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model; data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
- asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
- JavaScript binding everything together.
The classic web application model works like this: Most user actions in the interface trigger an HTTP request back to a web server. The server does some processing — retrieving data, crunching numbers, talking to various legacy systems — and then returns an HTML page to the client. It’s a model adapted from the Web’s original use as a hypertext medium, but as readers of The Elements of User Experience know, what makes the Web good for hypertext doesn’t necessarily make it good for software applications.
Ajax Way
Instead of loading a webpage at the start of the session, the browser loads an Ajax engine — written in JavaScript and usually tucked away in a hidden frame. This engine is responsible for both rendering the interface the user sees and communicating with the server on the user’s behalf. The Ajax engine allows the user’s interaction with the application to happen asynchronously — independent of communication with the server. So the user is never staring at a blank browser window and an hourglass icon, waiting around for the server to do something."
Analysis
1. The architectural balance between "fat client" and "this client" continues in a yin-yang seesaw. Probalbly thus it will always be. The rush away from fat (e.g., client-server mid-1990s) clients to "thin" web clients with a mere sliver of HTML cum Java Script left many wide-area network users frustrated while the web-load bars slowly move from left to right. There are too many client-server interactions in the unpredictable web response time world to make the current thin client model last in a web services world.
With fast machines loafing along, it makes sense in the Ajax model to place more of the local work on the desktop (or laptop) so the user gets more rapid response to what they are looking for. Mousing to the place on the map and zooming in are a good example.
2. Interesting that Google is quietly playing with fire. They just throw this technology out there without so much as a press release, Larry Ellison would have a migraine if that happened at Oracle. The technology is a open as it gets, so it runs on all kinds of browsers -- a not so subtle jab at Microsoft's browser hegemony.
3. The more combinations of open technology take root, the lower the revenues of the software industry. Microsoft, IBM, Macromedia and a host of other software tool companies have much to lose when premier web sites like Google go pure-white with standards based code. And if Google can do it, so can General Motors and other technology-savvy enterprises.
4. You will add Ajax to your lexicon. Ajax will be a big deal in the world's development community inside six months.
5. This will drive the "premier supplier of janitorial and cleaning industries software" absolutely crazy. :-)
Peter S. Kastner
OC Podcast
This is the On Computers podcast for 03-13-2005. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Links from the show
Geekmeet
What Memory is Best?
DDR on Pentium4 (old)
DDR versus DDR2
Anand Tech on DDR2 and X-Bit Labs also on DDR versus DDR2 memory performance
Game PC on DDR benchmark and tests of 3 high-end DDR2 memory products suggests DDR2 is starting to pull away in performance with DDR2-600. And the cost differential between premium DDR memory and DDR2 memory is not large. [Peter S. Kastner]
Ways to tell what hardware you have Belarc and Everest
Google Converts Your Phone Number Into a Map to Your House from the blog.
Ageia Physics Processing Unit Improve Photo Realism of games!
Interview with ageia developers
Mozilla stopping Mozilla suite development
Why we don't allow comments on this blog...
How to Remove NAV2003 and earlier
Regcleaner link
VIA DP 310 Dual Processor, mini ITX and here are the specs
Free typing tutor
*nix Seti unit cacher here
Th-th-that's ALL folks, have a good week
What Memory is Best?
DDR on Pentium4 (old)
DDR versus DDR2
Anand Tech on DDR2 and X-Bit Labs also on DDR versus DDR2 memory performance
Game PC on DDR benchmark and tests of 3 high-end DDR2 memory products suggests DDR2 is starting to pull away in performance with DDR2-600. And the cost differential between premium DDR memory and DDR2 memory is not large. [Peter S. Kastner]
Ways to tell what hardware you have Belarc and Everest
Google Converts Your Phone Number Into a Map to Your House from the blog.
Ageia Physics Processing Unit Improve Photo Realism of games!
Interview with ageia developers
Mozilla stopping Mozilla suite development
Why we don't allow comments on this blog...
How to Remove NAV2003 and earlier
Regcleaner link
VIA DP 310 Dual Processor, mini ITX and here are the specs
Free typing tutor
*nix Seti unit cacher here
Th-th-that's ALL folks, have a good week
Sun Rises in Redmond
Scant evidence from a blog, but the photos are not likely faked. It sure makes sense for Microsoft to sell its forthcoming Windows 64 on Sun's AMD Opteron-based servers. My nose tells me this unannounced story will come true.
Sun sells hardware: the cynic in me says let the customers decide whether they want Linux, Solaris, or Windows. And Sun needs to move tons of Opterons to make up the revenue dollars for slow-growth/declining big-iron SPARC Unix servers.
Peter S. Kastner
Sun sells hardware: the cynic in me says let the customers decide whether they want Linux, Solaris, or Windows. And Sun needs to move tons of Opterons to make up the revenue dollars for slow-growth/declining big-iron SPARC Unix servers.
Peter S. Kastner
AMD Skips DDR2 in 2005
AMD is seeing no real performance gains in DDR2 -- and DDR2 costs more -- so AMD is not respinning its Athlon 64 processors to support it. I cannot fault AMD's logic.
Peter S. Kastner
Peter S. Kastner
My 1st time
Recently got my first KVM switch.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MPB079-N
Please use
http://www.geeks.com/?sourceid=qIrKQjQboTbOAkqAaJof
Joe's link if you decide to get one too.
I have 3 main computers. Up to now i have been using seperate keybords, Mice, and monitors. Needless to say this took up a whole bunch of space. After hearing most of the rest of the folks here talking about their KVM switches, I finally decided to try one of my own. After seeing what compgeeks had to offer, I got the one above. Looked like it had everything and was cheap. So, when i got it, I deciphered the 3"X4" instuctions in about 45 minutes.
After 3 attempts at hooking everything up. I crossed my fingers and powered everything up. Well, no video. Turns out I didn't have my main computer hooked into the #1 postion. So, switched a few more cables and TA DA. I got video. Fired everything else up. tried my first switch (scroll lock, scroll lock, computer #), that took a few attempts. Finnaly got switched over to #2 and the #3. It will also scan for computers if you hit space instead of the number. Now I am a switching fool (LOL). Just last week I think I got a bit too fast. I was ghosting one computer onto another over the LAN. while I was listening to oncomputers. Well, video went funky and scrunched up. I was going nuts could not get anything. Had to shut everthing down. I heaved a sigh of relief when everything came back.
So, to sum up I cleared out a great deal of space, extra montors, keyboards and mice. Saved myself allot of moving from computer to computer. All for $35 plus shipping.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MPB079-N
Please use
http://www.geeks.com/?sourceid=qIrKQjQboTbOAkqAaJof
Joe's link if you decide to get one too.
I have 3 main computers. Up to now i have been using seperate keybords, Mice, and monitors. Needless to say this took up a whole bunch of space. After hearing most of the rest of the folks here talking about their KVM switches, I finally decided to try one of my own. After seeing what compgeeks had to offer, I got the one above. Looked like it had everything and was cheap. So, when i got it, I deciphered the 3"X4" instuctions in about 45 minutes.
After 3 attempts at hooking everything up. I crossed my fingers and powered everything up. Well, no video. Turns out I didn't have my main computer hooked into the #1 postion. So, switched a few more cables and TA DA. I got video. Fired everything else up. tried my first switch (scroll lock, scroll lock, computer #), that took a few attempts. Finnaly got switched over to #2 and the #3. It will also scan for computers if you hit space instead of the number. Now I am a switching fool (LOL). Just last week I think I got a bit too fast. I was ghosting one computer onto another over the LAN. while I was listening to oncomputers. Well, video went funky and scrunched up. I was going nuts could not get anything. Had to shut everthing down. I heaved a sigh of relief when everything came back.
So, to sum up I cleared out a great deal of space, extra montors, keyboards and mice. Saved myself allot of moving from computer to computer. All for $35 plus shipping.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Microsoft Visual Basic Developers Revolt Over MS' Decision to Kill VB
Microsoft, which has actively been courting increased developer interest in the Windows platforms has decided to end it's support for Visual Basic, probably the most widely used language for coding Windows applications, in favor of Visual Basic .Net, a fundamentally different language. Some developers are protesting and would like VB maintained and developed alongside VB.Net.
This may be a cautionary tale about investing one's programming career based upon a proprietary language. Then again; it might just be that folks don't want to transition to the future when the tools they are currently using are apparently still viable. You be the judge. I surely don't know how to call it. But when I code, I code in languages that are not the property of one company, such as Python. Though I only program in the smallest of ways, the cross-platform capabilities of Python and Java are attractive to me. Okay, Java is proprietary (though perhaps Sun will heed calls to open it up) but Java runs everywhere, which makes it special. And Sun doesn't demand a license to use it, which makes it different in my eyes and those of many others.
Many programmers are moving to languages which run on many platforms, not just Windows or another one (Intel's Itanium?). VB had coders locked into the Windows platform, was and is a viable language, and MS should probably keep supporting it, lest they lose the support of programmers completely within their fold. There is no effective way, short of a complete re-write, to move VB applications over to VB.Net. This effectively strands the VB developers as MS will no longer be updating VB6 (the most current version) for security or other important shortcomings.
Jack
This may be a cautionary tale about investing one's programming career based upon a proprietary language. Then again; it might just be that folks don't want to transition to the future when the tools they are currently using are apparently still viable. You be the judge. I surely don't know how to call it. But when I code, I code in languages that are not the property of one company, such as Python. Though I only program in the smallest of ways, the cross-platform capabilities of Python and Java are attractive to me. Okay, Java is proprietary (though perhaps Sun will heed calls to open it up) but Java runs everywhere, which makes it special. And Sun doesn't demand a license to use it, which makes it different in my eyes and those of many others.
Many programmers are moving to languages which run on many platforms, not just Windows or another one (Intel's Itanium?). VB had coders locked into the Windows platform, was and is a viable language, and MS should probably keep supporting it, lest they lose the support of programmers completely within their fold. There is no effective way, short of a complete re-write, to move VB applications over to VB.Net. This effectively strands the VB developers as MS will no longer be updating VB6 (the most current version) for security or other important shortcomings.
Jack
Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center WebLogs
The Microsoft Developer's Network web sites are fascinating places to cruise. The link above will take you to a part of it which contains blogs by MS employees. While there's a huge amount of "rah-rah" for MS, there's also a lot of interesting information. Some of what I've read there has actually helped me in my work and much of it is entertainingly informative.
Not only is it a human face to a company I rarely perceive in that way, it also tells us a lot about where MS is heading; meaning where all of us will be, soon enough.
Jack
Not only is it a human face to a company I rarely perceive in that way, it also tells us a lot about where MS is heading; meaning where all of us will be, soon enough.
Jack
Friday, March 11, 2005
CNN.com - CompUSA settles rebate complaint - Mar 11, 2005
If you have any unresolved rebates from Compusa, you might wanna submit them, within the next 75 days.
Specialized Processor for PC (Game) Physics
Startup Ageia announced a chip dedicated to improving virtual world physics. The immediate use will be in game consoles and PCs to more rapidly compute real-world Newtonian issues for hard and soft bodies, clothing, and particles. Such dedicated chips will do a job that is now handled in software on the main microprocessor. If Ageia gets to market by Christmas like they promise, they have a "first-mover" opportunity to get built into next-generation games and gaming consoles, not to mention graphics boards, PCs and notebooks.
Ageia's work leads us another step closer to photo-realistic virtual worlds running on mainstream PCs (including game consoles).
Interestingly, I had dinner last night with a venture capitalist who makes a convincing case that specialized hardware chips -- and I bet he would agree what Ageia is doing fits the description to a T -- are a growth opportunity for early stage investors.
The microprocessor giants, Intel and AMD, will argue that the rapid deployment of multiple CPU cores starting this spring will obviate the need for dedicated physics processors -- or sound processors for that matter -- in the battle to control silicon and computing functions. I'll weigh in on the side of the VC: there is a role, albeit yet to be proven in the market, for specialized processors.
Peter S. Kastner
Ageia's work leads us another step closer to photo-realistic virtual worlds running on mainstream PCs (including game consoles).
Interestingly, I had dinner last night with a venture capitalist who makes a convincing case that specialized hardware chips -- and I bet he would agree what Ageia is doing fits the description to a T -- are a growth opportunity for early stage investors.
The microprocessor giants, Intel and AMD, will argue that the rapid deployment of multiple CPU cores starting this spring will obviate the need for dedicated physics processors -- or sound processors for that matter -- in the battle to control silicon and computing functions. I'll weigh in on the side of the VC: there is a role, albeit yet to be proven in the market, for specialized processors.
Peter S. Kastner
Google Converts Your Phone Number Into a Map to Your House
Google has implemented a new feature where you can type someone's telephone number into the search bar and hit enter and then you will be given a map to their house. Everyone should be aware of this! Note that you can have your phone number removed or blocked.
The safety issues are obvious, and alarming. In order to test whether your phone number is mapped, go to Google. Type your phone number in the search bar (I.e. 555-555-1212) and hit enter.
If you want to BLOCK Google from divulging your private information, simply click on your phone number. Removal takes 48-hours. If you are unlisted in the phone book,
you might not be in there, but it is a good idea just to check. If your number does come up, then if you click on map, it will show you a direct map to your house...
Then again, some folks will consider this capability a feature. But the choice should be yours.
Peter S. Kastner
The safety issues are obvious, and alarming. In order to test whether your phone number is mapped, go to Google. Type your phone number in the search bar (I.e. 555-555-1212) and hit enter.
If you want to BLOCK Google from divulging your private information, simply click on your phone number. Removal takes 48-hours. If you are unlisted in the phone book,
you might not be in there, but it is a good idea just to check. If your number does come up, then if you click on map, it will show you a direct map to your house...
Then again, some folks will consider this capability a feature. But the choice should be yours.
Peter S. Kastner
Spyware Infects IE Through Alternative Browsers!
This is important! While I suppose it was only a matter of time before the slimeballs attacked the alternative browsers like Firefox, Mozilla and Safari, it has happened in a big way. Read this and watch for follow-ups. Fixes are in the works, but this attacks via fundamental code in browsers and may take a while to fix.
Jack
Jack
An update to the HP saga
Just thought I would pass along a little update on the saga I posted last week. The machines that were on order finally arrived. I must say that I was suitably impressed with the hardware. The AMD 64 processor was mindblowingly fast, this machine was the snappiest laptop I have ever had the pleasure of tinkering with. They also came with the docking station, whoever designed these things my hat is off to them. This was my first time using one, the quality of the hardware was very impressive. I didn't even need to use the install discs, it just plain worked folks. This is the way that computers should be, right out of the box. Despite HP saying to the contrary, they did arrive with restore discs. So I am still very unsure of what customer services issue was with telling my friend that they did not send them anymore. In closing, I honestly believe with customer service issues aside. My friend should be very happy with the high end performance and durability of the machine.
Till next time...
Till next time...
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Gizmodo - News from CeBIT
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
AOL Tries to Become VOIP Gorilla
After startups like Vonage, brand names like AT&T, and freeware like Skype, AOL is into the voice over Internet (VOIP) market for telephony. With millions of customers, AOL has to be taken seriously. However, many customers are still using dial-up, and VOIP brings nothing to those customers.
Whether AOL can become the next gorilla in VOIP is problematic. The key takeaway from this announcement, which follows on the not to subtle plug for VOIP by Intel last week at its developer forum, is that the VOIP saloon is open, and customers can belly up to the bar. I expect several million more broadband customers will try VOIP this year, further cratering the landline business. The real gorillas to watch do not include AOL: watch how SBC and Verizon play with the VOIP revenue hand grenade.
Peter S. Kastner
Whether AOL can become the next gorilla in VOIP is problematic. The key takeaway from this announcement, which follows on the not to subtle plug for VOIP by Intel last week at its developer forum, is that the VOIP saloon is open, and customers can belly up to the bar. I expect several million more broadband customers will try VOIP this year, further cratering the landline business. The real gorillas to watch do not include AOL: watch how SBC and Verizon play with the VOIP revenue hand grenade.
Peter S. Kastner
New Version of BitTorrent Debuts!
The popular open source BitTorrent file sharing software has received it's first major revision in a year. Version 4.0 is out. There's a new license and many functional improvements. Check it out at the link above.
Jack
Jack
With Interchangeable Parts, Notebooks Will commodities
The do-it-yourself (DIY) market of hobbyists fiddling their own desktops has gained considerable momentum in the past couple of years. Enough so that I call it a market segment.
But DIY notebook enthusiasts are presently plain out of luck: I know of know standard "kits" that would allow a consumer to build -- let alone customize -- a notebook.
Mobileformfactors.org may create the catalyst which enables a DIY notebook market. By focusing on standards which will allow for interchangeable parts, the organization will accomplish five things, wittingly or not:
But DIY notebook enthusiasts are presently plain out of luck: I know of know standard "kits" that would allow a consumer to build -- let alone customize -- a notebook.
Mobileformfactors.org may create the catalyst which enables a DIY notebook market. By focusing on standards which will allow for interchangeable parts, the organization will accomplish five things, wittingly or not:
- With standards for, say, heat exchanger dimensions and dissipation characteristics, OEMs will be able to build fewer models in more volume -- driving down prices. [Heat exchangers are typically custom parts for each OEM notebook today]
- As Colt and Ford proved with rifles and cars, respectively, interchangeable parts will allow Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) in Taiwan and China to offer generic "white box" notebooks, without OEM orders and at lower costs -- the design and test costs will be much lower with interchangeable parts.
- To supply second- and third-tier OEMs, the ODMs can offer off-the-shelf designs. Parts can be sourced locally, spurring geographic innovation.
- Once an ODM-OEM business gets started, parts manufacturers in Asia will gear up to crank out now-standard notebook parts, which will be stocked and sold online.
- Consumers will then be able to buy notebook parts just like they buy desktop cases, motherboards, optical, processors and OEM software to build a custom desktop.
I see nothing to stop this trend from happening. The notebook OEMs lack the clout. The parts manufacturers will have to do standardized parts to keep up with the competition. And the big component makers such as Intel and Microsoft will consider a sale a sale as nothing is lost to them -- low-volume prices may be higher than the big OEMs like Dell and HP pay. Moreover, some consumer hobbyists will want to do this.
But be warned that there is a lot less room to maneuver inside a notebook shell than there is in a gamer case. And you will have to clean up your cables in order to screw the case shut.
IBM & Lenovo PC Deal Jumps National Security Hurdle
With approval from the U.S. government in hand, IBM and Lenovo are free to complete the sale of IBM's PC buiness to China's Lenovo. The hiccup was caused by concerns about the Chinese government, a Lenovo investor, having control of technology widely used by federal government agencies, especially the intelligence and military departments.
After all is said and done, a second-quarter close is still on track. That means a state of limbo where customers get antsy is unlikely to occur, so Dell and HP are unlikely to scoop up many IBM PC customers.
The real proof in the pudding of this mega-deal will be how well Lenovo expands out of its China box, where 97% of sales currently come from. IBM's own sales force and channel pertners will also have to stay the course. The success or failure of this deal cannot be measured in a year (the agreement runs five years as IBM's PC source). Inherent competition between IBM's xSeries and Lenovo's nascent server capabilities is inevitable, and a likely source of considerable friction.
Peter S. Kastner
After all is said and done, a second-quarter close is still on track. That means a state of limbo where customers get antsy is unlikely to occur, so Dell and HP are unlikely to scoop up many IBM PC customers.
The real proof in the pudding of this mega-deal will be how well Lenovo expands out of its China box, where 97% of sales currently come from. IBM's own sales force and channel pertners will also have to stay the course. The success or failure of this deal cannot be measured in a year (the agreement runs five years as IBM's PC source). Inherent competition between IBM's xSeries and Lenovo's nascent server capabilities is inevitable, and a likely source of considerable friction.
Peter S. Kastner
Waiting for the Second Coming Will Probably Pay Off Faster Than Waiting for HP Printer Software to Work
I've had a love-hate relationship with HP products, over the years. I like their printers, but the price of consumables for them is prohibitive, in my opinion. HP support has been spotty, at best, for me. Sometimes, they shine, but often they're condescending to nearly the point of rudeness. It's as if I have to prove my credentials as a tech before I'm entitled to a straight answer. They do make some very desireable computers and I've bought a few. Two in this last year, as a matter of fact. And HP servers are often what I recommend for my clients because they're as reliable as refrigerators and fairly priced.
Try downloading drivers for a 3 year old laptop, though. They don't offer them. At least I've never found them and you would be hard pressed to look harder than I have. They're not real hot on supporting products outside the warranty period. It would be easy and cheap to leave them on a server somewhere, for those of us who need them. The return in customer good will would probably pay the costs. They don't do it, though.
I recently disinfected my wife's parents' computer, which was chock-full of spyware and was functioning as a spam bot. During the course of the job, we decided they needed to upgrade the OS from Windows ME to Windows 2000 Professional or XP Home. We ended up choosing W2K Pro, as licenses were already at hand, where we would have had to pay for XP, as I had no more licenses. The machine is an HP desktop with an 800 MHz Celeron CPU and I added some RAM so it's possessed of 256 MB. This is surely good enough specs to provide a machine capable of doing everything they do in a snappy manner and, indeed, I was very satisfied with the results of the upgrade and installation until I got to the printer.
The unit in question is an HP psc750 xi. It's a printer, scanner and copier all in one kind of thing. Attractive and nicely laid out, I think it would be something which added to one's work if it performed as I expect. It doesn't, though. It's a pig, when using the software HP provides with it. The installation of software from the accompanying CDs, takes up over 200 MEGABYTES on the hard drive. The sheer size of the installation is apalling! I don't care if disk space is cheap, these days. That's just too much.
The size of the installation shows immediately when the application is launched. It takes forever to open. A full ten minutes on this machine. Yes, a Celeron with it's smal cache and low internal bus speed is not the best computer. But with all other applications, it performs well enough. This one is just too big. Clicking on the "scan" button requires a several minute wait until the machine is ready to start the actual scan. If you rush it, the application locks up. You have to wait and take it slow. It's slower to open than The GIMP, for Heaven's sake! And The GIMP is a huge application with dozens of plug-ins that have to be loaded. This is just a printer driver plus a few functions.
I complained about this on the show and Peter reminded me that HP never claimed to be a software company. Darned right they aren't!
The machine itself is not slow. I hooked it up to my Linux laptop and used all it's functions via the drivers included in most current Linux distributions and it performed quite briskly. The problem is definitely the software. HP offers a "driver only" package for it. That's nearly 50 megabytes in the download and over that when installed. Other applications can be used for the interface and that helps noticeably. I wish I had a really good one and am actively looking for one. I'm sure there are some out there. Right now, they're only printing from other apps, such as Open Office, and doing all their scanning with PaperPort, with which they are not too happy.
What the world needs is good software for this sort of task and the machines we use for it. God knows HP isn't providing it.
Jack
Try downloading drivers for a 3 year old laptop, though. They don't offer them. At least I've never found them and you would be hard pressed to look harder than I have. They're not real hot on supporting products outside the warranty period. It would be easy and cheap to leave them on a server somewhere, for those of us who need them. The return in customer good will would probably pay the costs. They don't do it, though.
I recently disinfected my wife's parents' computer, which was chock-full of spyware and was functioning as a spam bot. During the course of the job, we decided they needed to upgrade the OS from Windows ME to Windows 2000 Professional or XP Home. We ended up choosing W2K Pro, as licenses were already at hand, where we would have had to pay for XP, as I had no more licenses. The machine is an HP desktop with an 800 MHz Celeron CPU and I added some RAM so it's possessed of 256 MB. This is surely good enough specs to provide a machine capable of doing everything they do in a snappy manner and, indeed, I was very satisfied with the results of the upgrade and installation until I got to the printer.
The unit in question is an HP psc750 xi. It's a printer, scanner and copier all in one kind of thing. Attractive and nicely laid out, I think it would be something which added to one's work if it performed as I expect. It doesn't, though. It's a pig, when using the software HP provides with it. The installation of software from the accompanying CDs, takes up over 200 MEGABYTES on the hard drive. The sheer size of the installation is apalling! I don't care if disk space is cheap, these days. That's just too much.
The size of the installation shows immediately when the application is launched. It takes forever to open. A full ten minutes on this machine. Yes, a Celeron with it's smal cache and low internal bus speed is not the best computer. But with all other applications, it performs well enough. This one is just too big. Clicking on the "scan" button requires a several minute wait until the machine is ready to start the actual scan. If you rush it, the application locks up. You have to wait and take it slow. It's slower to open than The GIMP, for Heaven's sake! And The GIMP is a huge application with dozens of plug-ins that have to be loaded. This is just a printer driver plus a few functions.
I complained about this on the show and Peter reminded me that HP never claimed to be a software company. Darned right they aren't!
The machine itself is not slow. I hooked it up to my Linux laptop and used all it's functions via the drivers included in most current Linux distributions and it performed quite briskly. The problem is definitely the software. HP offers a "driver only" package for it. That's nearly 50 megabytes in the download and over that when installed. Other applications can be used for the interface and that helps noticeably. I wish I had a really good one and am actively looking for one. I'm sure there are some out there. Right now, they're only printing from other apps, such as Open Office, and doing all their scanning with PaperPort, with which they are not too happy.
What the world needs is good software for this sort of task and the machines we use for it. God knows HP isn't providing it.
Jack
Buying a Computer; The Unhurried Approach
We see a lot of folks who don't get the computer they want or need because they buy in a hurry. No, they don't mess up. It's just that they go out to buy when they really need a new computer that very moment and can't get a deal on the "right" machine. Buying in a hurry is sometimes necessary. But if you can avoid it, you can do a lot better for the amount of money spent. I know this sounds like simple stuff, but you'd be surprised at how many people can't or don't pay heed to it.
The great deals offered by Dell that Peter mentioned a few entries below this one are a case in point. If you were at the point where you were going to need a new computer soon and were already sitting on the money, this would be the time to jump in and buy. If you are forced to buy at a given time, it's bad odds againsti you won't be able to get a deal. It's simply thinking ahead, but it is going to pay off more in the next few months than at any time in the recent past.
Why? Well, all the PC and notebook makers are going to be offering different models in the next 3 or more months. More new models than they usually introduce in a short period. New single and dual-core processors and peripherals are going to dictate this. Any company who doesn't bring out models based on the new parts in a hurry is going to lose brownie points, so they'll all be doing it. And because they can't afford to have too many different models floating around (for store inventory reasons and limited available display space, mostly) there will be sales to move the "old" merchandise.
Now some of use just won't be able to live without the newest, fastest computers. Most of us, however, have no problem existing with a slightly out-of-date machine. (I'm typing this on a 500 MHz AMD K6 powered desktop. It's still a very useful box to me.) There is still a LOT of life left in both single processor and 32 bit computers and computing. Many of us-perhaps most of us-can get on just fine with these machines. The geek in me wants the hottest new gear, but the truth of the matter is that I can live and do my work just fine on a single cpu, 32 bit machine. Newer, 64 bit hardware would float my boat, but I don't need it.
I suspect notebook buyers will have it best in this, because notebooks have a longer lead time; meaning the time between manufacture and arriving at the point of sale. The new lines of slim and yet high performance notebooks will likely replace a higher percentage of stock than those desktops that premier will.
So, if you're going to be in the market soon and can live well with models currently offered, rather than the newest stuff coming along, put the money in the back of your wallet now and start watching for spot sales. There's going to be a lot of them; some big and some on only a few machines. A bit of judicious shopping will really pay off in the next few months.
Jack
The great deals offered by Dell that Peter mentioned a few entries below this one are a case in point. If you were at the point where you were going to need a new computer soon and were already sitting on the money, this would be the time to jump in and buy. If you are forced to buy at a given time, it's bad odds againsti you won't be able to get a deal. It's simply thinking ahead, but it is going to pay off more in the next few months than at any time in the recent past.
Why? Well, all the PC and notebook makers are going to be offering different models in the next 3 or more months. More new models than they usually introduce in a short period. New single and dual-core processors and peripherals are going to dictate this. Any company who doesn't bring out models based on the new parts in a hurry is going to lose brownie points, so they'll all be doing it. And because they can't afford to have too many different models floating around (for store inventory reasons and limited available display space, mostly) there will be sales to move the "old" merchandise.
Now some of use just won't be able to live without the newest, fastest computers. Most of us, however, have no problem existing with a slightly out-of-date machine. (I'm typing this on a 500 MHz AMD K6 powered desktop. It's still a very useful box to me.) There is still a LOT of life left in both single processor and 32 bit computers and computing. Many of us-perhaps most of us-can get on just fine with these machines. The geek in me wants the hottest new gear, but the truth of the matter is that I can live and do my work just fine on a single cpu, 32 bit machine. Newer, 64 bit hardware would float my boat, but I don't need it.
I suspect notebook buyers will have it best in this, because notebooks have a longer lead time; meaning the time between manufacture and arriving at the point of sale. The new lines of slim and yet high performance notebooks will likely replace a higher percentage of stock than those desktops that premier will.
So, if you're going to be in the market soon and can live well with models currently offered, rather than the newest stuff coming along, put the money in the back of your wallet now and start watching for spot sales. There's going to be a lot of them; some big and some on only a few machines. A bit of judicious shopping will really pay off in the next few months.
Jack
Monday, March 07, 2005
OC Podcast
This is the On Computers podcast for 03-06-2005. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.
Good Deals at Dell
Every once in a quarter Dell has great deals for a week or so. This is the week to splurge if Dell is your choice.
For instance, $839 gets you:
Dimension 8400
Pentium® 4 Processor 630 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
FREE UPGRADE! 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (2x512M)
FREE UPGRADE! 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive(7200RPM)w/ Native Command Queuing
FREE two-day shipping
There are other desktop and notebook deals in the 20% range, all at Dell.
Peter S. Kastner
For instance, $839 gets you:
Dimension 8400
Pentium® 4 Processor 630 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
FREE UPGRADE! 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (2x512M)
FREE UPGRADE! 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive(7200RPM)w/ Native Command Queuing
FREE two-day shipping
There are other desktop and notebook deals in the 20% range, all at Dell.
Peter S. Kastner
Unwanted Software Installations with Peer-to-Peer Applications
Benjamin Edelman operates a very good, very informative web site regarding security and related topics. He's analyzed the End User License Agreements (EULAs) along with the hundreds of registry keys written and extra software installed by 5 P2P applications. One license agreement ran well over 22,000 words! No wonder folks don't read them. It's an interesting and eye-opening read. Screen shots and comparison charts are well thought out and clearly convey what's up.
Actually, everything on the site deserves your attention, in my opinion. This one in particular, though. If you don't understand the issues of unwanted software installation, this one is for you. If you do already get it, the details will still knock your socks off.
Jack
Actually, everything on the site deserves your attention, in my opinion. This one in particular, though. If you don't understand the issues of unwanted software installation, this one is for you. If you do already get it, the details will still knock your socks off.
Jack
Is Linux Ready for the Desktop?
Yet another article of the genre. This time by James Cherryh, who is no slouch. His points are valid, no matter where you stand on the notion.
In the next little while, I'll be posting as my wife, a first time Linux installer, partitions her laptop and starts dual booting different distros, looking for one which suits her. Stay tuned. Hopefully, this will provide some insight as to whether you and yours could use Linux as a primary desktop OS.
Jack
In the next little while, I'll be posting as my wife, a first time Linux installer, partitions her laptop and starts dual booting different distros, looking for one which suits her. Stay tuned. Hopefully, this will provide some insight as to whether you and yours could use Linux as a primary desktop OS.
Jack
SP2 is Coming, Automatically
Starting next month, the grace period for deferring the install of Microsoft's SP2 update expires. That means those who have their Windows XP machines set to automatically install Windows updates (a good idea) will find themselves updated.
You can turn off Automatic Updates, but the OnComputers team recommends consumers install this important security and stability improvement to Windows XP.
Those software application developers who have not yet updated their apps to play nice with SP2 should not be surprised to start getting more help desk calls starting April 12th.
Peter S. Kastner
You can turn off Automatic Updates, but the OnComputers team recommends consumers install this important security and stability improvement to Windows XP.
Those software application developers who have not yet updated their apps to play nice with SP2 should not be surprised to start getting more help desk calls starting April 12th.
Peter S. Kastner
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Media Sites: Say No to Pop-Ups
I enjoyed reading this article from Wired. I think it does a good job of analyzing the whole pop-up thing. However I'll go a little further with this question: What is the worst thing about pop-ads (pop-ups/unders)? You may have a different answer, but for me it is having to close the danged things.
So say there are 20 pop-ads and out of that 20, one truly interests me (and I'm being generous here). That means that in order to recieve that one "good" ad I have to close 19 "bad" ads. When in reality it is more like 1 out of 100 or 1 out of 1000, the ad I may be interested in gets closed without looking at it because it is just another annoyance invading my desktop, which is my personal space, -- an important point that seems to elude the pop-ad peddlers.
I haven't been bothered for 4 years or so, since I started blocking pop-ads about that time. I have been blissfully unaware of what any of them may be trying to sell me. Annoy me enough -- invade what I consider my space enough, and I will blot you out of my world any way I can.
So what about ad supported sites? There is no free ride right? Everything costs something, right? I have no "blanket" ad blocker in place except for pop-ads. I still have flash turned on and I use Adblock (a Firefox extension) which is selective for flash, graphics and I-frames. Frankly, I only bother with Adblock when an ad is annoying and flashing in my face. Adblock is effective, but it takes work. So I see the ads on ad supported sites that respect me as a possible customer and I don't see the ads that don't.
There is another problem with online ads these days. I may see an ad that is a great offer from a Web based business that I know and trust. But with the prevalence of phishing, am I going to click on that ad link? Not without thinking about it. I'm much more likely to type in the URL of the trusted site and rummage around to see if the "deal" is available without having to click on the ad link. If not, I figure I can do without. This is one very real way in which the criminals are further ruining e-commerce. A way that I've never seen discussed anywhere, but I can't be the only cautious surfer who does not trust every link I see. I wonder how many of us think twice about following a link in an ad?
We live in a world in which advertising is becoming more and more intrusive. Marketers keep trying to find new ways to get in our faces (or ears in the case of audio only media). There are limits. Just like the telemarketers overreached until the American public demanded legislative relief, all advertisers risk alienating the very people they are trying to reach. In the pop-ad arena, this level of alienation was reached several years ago, as evidenced by the popularity and proliferation of pop-ad blockers. Some marketers are backing off while others are working hard to get around pop-up blockers. To what end, the accidental click in a effort to get rid of the thing? It is time for the pop-ad purveyors to give it, and us, a rest.
So say there are 20 pop-ads and out of that 20, one truly interests me (and I'm being generous here). That means that in order to recieve that one "good" ad I have to close 19 "bad" ads. When in reality it is more like 1 out of 100 or 1 out of 1000, the ad I may be interested in gets closed without looking at it because it is just another annoyance invading my desktop, which is my personal space, -- an important point that seems to elude the pop-ad peddlers.
I haven't been bothered for 4 years or so, since I started blocking pop-ads about that time. I have been blissfully unaware of what any of them may be trying to sell me. Annoy me enough -- invade what I consider my space enough, and I will blot you out of my world any way I can.
So what about ad supported sites? There is no free ride right? Everything costs something, right? I have no "blanket" ad blocker in place except for pop-ads. I still have flash turned on and I use Adblock (a Firefox extension) which is selective for flash, graphics and I-frames. Frankly, I only bother with Adblock when an ad is annoying and flashing in my face. Adblock is effective, but it takes work. So I see the ads on ad supported sites that respect me as a possible customer and I don't see the ads that don't.
There is another problem with online ads these days. I may see an ad that is a great offer from a Web based business that I know and trust. But with the prevalence of phishing, am I going to click on that ad link? Not without thinking about it. I'm much more likely to type in the URL of the trusted site and rummage around to see if the "deal" is available without having to click on the ad link. If not, I figure I can do without. This is one very real way in which the criminals are further ruining e-commerce. A way that I've never seen discussed anywhere, but I can't be the only cautious surfer who does not trust every link I see. I wonder how many of us think twice about following a link in an ad?
We live in a world in which advertising is becoming more and more intrusive. Marketers keep trying to find new ways to get in our faces (or ears in the case of audio only media). There are limits. Just like the telemarketers overreached until the American public demanded legislative relief, all advertisers risk alienating the very people they are trying to reach. In the pop-ad arena, this level of alienation was reached several years ago, as evidenced by the popularity and proliferation of pop-ad blockers. Some marketers are backing off while others are working hard to get around pop-up blockers. To what end, the accidental click in a effort to get rid of the thing? It is time for the pop-ad purveyors to give it, and us, a rest.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Stolen Pacemakers Sold on eBay
Does your doctor shop on eBay? If so, perhaps you want to find a different doc. Here a story about how a stolen pacemaker that was sold on eBay found its way into a patient.
DRAM Prices Slump
Spot prices for DRAM continue to drop, suggesting lower prices by OEMs -- or better deals for memory upgrades.
Peter S. Kastner
Peter S. Kastner
IT Holiday: No Microsoft Patches This Month
Microsoft does not plan to release any security bulletins or patches this month. Last month Microsoft issued 13 security bulletins covering 17 security flaws.
Looks like IT (and consumers) get a holiday this month.
Would that this is the start of a trend where Windows is more secure and fewer bugs need patching...but it's only one data point.
Peter S. Kastner
Looks like IT (and consumers) get a holiday this month.
Would that this is the start of a trend where Windows is more secure and fewer bugs need patching...but it's only one data point.
Peter S. Kastner
Bloggers not protected by Constitution, says Apple
Apple can force the three website publishers to surrender the names of their sources who disclosed confidential information about the company's upcoming products, says a California judge, noting that blogs and other forms of journalism are not privileged to publish leaked information such as trade secrets.
This one will be appealed, Ladies and Gentlemen. And make precedents.
Peter S. Kastner
This one will be appealed, Ladies and Gentlemen. And make precedents.
Peter S. Kastner
UPS: RFID not delivering enough value
After two years of trials, UPS is not seeing the cost and process quality improvements that it was counting on.
There are few, if any, indications that Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is accelerating in adoption due to numerous and costly problems.
Peter S. Kastner
There are few, if any, indications that Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is accelerating in adoption due to numerous and costly problems.
Peter S. Kastner
Virtual Computing Age Arrives Soon
Intel's forthcoming dual-core processors will contain "Vanderpool" technology (VT), hardware that enables new operating-system-like software running in a "hypervisor" to efficiently control multiple operating system instances. AMD will release its virtualization spec this month.
Virtualization allows two key things to happen on computers: running multiple OSs concurrently; and, running multiple users in hardware-protected "partitions" so the users cannot corrupt each other.
Virtual processors have been around in the mainframe and Risc-Unix world for (up to) decades, so the ideas are not new. What is new is that not just servers will get a hardware assist for virtualization. Small business, notebook, and enterprise & consumer desktops will also have the option for virtual processing.
Xeon processors with virtualization are a must-but for enterprises looking at better security on multi-application machines, and particularly for server consolidation. Save those Windows NT Server licenses! They may be valuable. (Just kidding)
Virtual processing will come slowly to consumers
In spite of VT-enabled desktops reaching consumers this summer, almost no consumers will use the technology in 2005. Virtual OS software from market leader VMware is geared to corporate workstations. It may come in a shrink-wrapped box, but it is not conceived as an average-home product. Leading adopters who buy VMware for their new Smithfield computers will find the "gotcha" in this implementation of virtual technology: each OS instance boots into its own real memory. With Windows XP, that means each user partition should have 256MB, plus room for the hypervisor. That means a 3-user home system running VT will require between 1 - 2 GB of memory, raising the price well beyond the mainstream. Ditto for corporate users.
It's not clear what Microsoft has up its sleeve for desktop/notebook virtualization in the 2006 Longhorn timeframe. If MS were able to share OS code (but not data) across partitions, a lot of the memory bloat from redundant code would be minimized. I am not counting on this, however, as the likelyhood is remote. Too complex to engineer. Even Microsoft's server virtualization product is currently an add-on to Windows Server 2003. My take is consumer virtualization with efficient OS support is a generation beyond Longhorn, which means at the turn of the decade.
Peter S. Kastner
Virtualization allows two key things to happen on computers: running multiple OSs concurrently; and, running multiple users in hardware-protected "partitions" so the users cannot corrupt each other.
Virtual processors have been around in the mainframe and Risc-Unix world for (up to) decades, so the ideas are not new. What is new is that not just servers will get a hardware assist for virtualization. Small business, notebook, and enterprise & consumer desktops will also have the option for virtual processing.
Xeon processors with virtualization are a must-but for enterprises looking at better security on multi-application machines, and particularly for server consolidation. Save those Windows NT Server licenses! They may be valuable. (Just kidding)
Virtual processing will come slowly to consumers
In spite of VT-enabled desktops reaching consumers this summer, almost no consumers will use the technology in 2005. Virtual OS software from market leader VMware is geared to corporate workstations. It may come in a shrink-wrapped box, but it is not conceived as an average-home product. Leading adopters who buy VMware for their new Smithfield computers will find the "gotcha" in this implementation of virtual technology: each OS instance boots into its own real memory. With Windows XP, that means each user partition should have 256MB, plus room for the hypervisor. That means a 3-user home system running VT will require between 1 - 2 GB of memory, raising the price well beyond the mainstream. Ditto for corporate users.
It's not clear what Microsoft has up its sleeve for desktop/notebook virtualization in the 2006 Longhorn timeframe. If MS were able to share OS code (but not data) across partitions, a lot of the memory bloat from redundant code would be minimized. I am not counting on this, however, as the likelyhood is remote. Too complex to engineer. Even Microsoft's server virtualization product is currently an add-on to Windows Server 2003. My take is consumer virtualization with efficient OS support is a generation beyond Longhorn, which means at the turn of the decade.
Peter S. Kastner
Intel Outlines Multi-Core Processor Plans. AMD Responds.
Correction: This blog published an item a week ago from The Register speculating that Intel's 8-way Itanium system for 2007, code-name Tukwila, had been cancelled. Not so, says Intel. In fact, the company committed this week to another generation beyond Tukwila -- but there are no details about Richford, expected around 2010.
MultiCores Everywhere
A total of 15 multi-core CPUs are in the Intel pipeline. All the new processors will support the execute disable (XD) bit, Enhanced SpeedStep or Demand Based Switching, as well as EM64T for 64 bit support. Intel is roughly catching up with all the features AMD has been offering for months, such as the NX bit, Cool & Quiet and 64 bit capabilities. Virtualization technology will be added this year. Next year, server I/O Acceleration and advanced manageability will debut, as well as 65 nm processors.
Intel's strategy is to out-gun AMD in useful but Intel-proprietary technologies, drawing the battle away from CPU speeds and feeds and more into feature set and overall value. Intel is also leading AMD down the lithography curve: AMD is beginning to transition to 90 nm products while Intel is delivering samples of 65 nm parts to OEMs. In getting almost a generation ahead of AMD in manufacturing technology, it will be hard for AMD to (profitably) play the lower price card and win. No bets yet on dual-processor performance, however, an area where AMD has had some success over the past year.
More on Intel's processor plans in this press release. Desktops lead the way in May, followed by Xeon later this year. Dual-processor Centrino notebooks, built on new 65 nm technology, appear early next year. Itanium leads up the rear. More review depth ZD, and The Inquirer. Tom's Hardware conference coverage here.
Meanwhile, AMD wants everyone to know it is doing dual-core too, and may even get to market in the next 60 days. With both AMD 64 processors at 2.4 GHz or better, these should be fast.
Note that Intel went out of its way to show many dual-core server, desktop and even next year's dual-core 65 nm Yonah notebook -- all running Windows XP and applications, many with production microprocessor packaging. Perhaps embarrassed about the Prescott launch disappointments, Intel wanted everybody to know these chips were running (many) months before being offered for sale.
It will be an interesting summer for consumers, sorting out all the silicon goodies now in manufacturing.
Peter S. Kastner
MultiCores Everywhere
A total of 15 multi-core CPUs are in the Intel pipeline. All the new processors will support the execute disable (XD) bit, Enhanced SpeedStep or Demand Based Switching, as well as EM64T for 64 bit support. Intel is roughly catching up with all the features AMD has been offering for months, such as the NX bit, Cool & Quiet and 64 bit capabilities. Virtualization technology will be added this year. Next year, server I/O Acceleration and advanced manageability will debut, as well as 65 nm processors.
Intel's strategy is to out-gun AMD in useful but Intel-proprietary technologies, drawing the battle away from CPU speeds and feeds and more into feature set and overall value. Intel is also leading AMD down the lithography curve: AMD is beginning to transition to 90 nm products while Intel is delivering samples of 65 nm parts to OEMs. In getting almost a generation ahead of AMD in manufacturing technology, it will be hard for AMD to (profitably) play the lower price card and win. No bets yet on dual-processor performance, however, an area where AMD has had some success over the past year.
More on Intel's processor plans in this press release. Desktops lead the way in May, followed by Xeon later this year. Dual-processor Centrino notebooks, built on new 65 nm technology, appear early next year. Itanium leads up the rear. More review depth ZD, and The Inquirer. Tom's Hardware conference coverage here.
Meanwhile, AMD wants everyone to know it is doing dual-core too, and may even get to market in the next 60 days. With both AMD 64 processors at 2.4 GHz or better, these should be fast.
Note that Intel went out of its way to show many dual-core server, desktop and even next year's dual-core 65 nm Yonah notebook -- all running Windows XP and applications, many with production microprocessor packaging. Perhaps embarrassed about the Prescott launch disappointments, Intel wanted everybody to know these chips were running (many) months before being offered for sale.
It will be an interesting summer for consumers, sorting out all the silicon goodies now in manufacturing.
Peter S. Kastner
Software Patents Create Havoc in Eurpoe
The software patent scandal -- too many patents protecting what are really common industry practice -- is about to raise hell in the European Union. The EC wants to strengthen patent holders rights. Which means U.S. software patent holders and the open source community need to be very wary. Meanwhile, the big software companies with rich patent portfolios -- think IBM and Microsoft -- may find themselves in a better position to extract their fees or their way on the rest of the software industry. Not a good situation for innovation, especially open source.
Peter S. Kastner
Peter S. Kastner
A Summary of SCO's Position Financially and in Regard to the IBM Lawsuit
Business Week Online takes a look at the current state of SCO.
One correction to the article needs to be made; The code SCO recently won discovery access to can not be examined by SCO employees. That would reveal IBM's "trade secrets" to SCO. The code will have to be examined by outside consultants or other parties not normally a part of SCO and at SCO's expense. ALL 1 billion lines of it! SCO cannot pick and choose. They asked for it and will have to report on all of what they asked for.
Jack
One correction to the article needs to be made; The code SCO recently won discovery access to can not be examined by SCO employees. That would reveal IBM's "trade secrets" to SCO. The code will have to be examined by outside consultants or other parties not normally a part of SCO and at SCO's expense. ALL 1 billion lines of it! SCO cannot pick and choose. They asked for it and will have to report on all of what they asked for.
Jack
Intel on Technology Futures
Interesting reading from a premier technology R&D company. The cover story on platform evolution ten years out is worth reading if you want hints at what your future PC will have in it, and how will it be architected. Based on what I heard at Intel's developer Forum this week, don't be surprised if 2015 microprocessors have 64 - 128 processor cores (some light, some heavy, and some as threads as in HyperThreading).
Peter S. Kastner
Cover Story
Platform 2015: Intel® Processor and Platform Evolution for the Next Decade
Shekhar Borkar, Pradeep Dubey, Kevin Kahn, David Kuck, Hans Mulder, Steve Pawlowski, and Justin RattnerThe future of computing promises a positive transformation of our world, and a continued need of ever-greater performance and capabilities. What will platforms and processors powering this future look like in 10 years? Intel's Platform 2015 vision looks ahead at the trends and usages, and architectural innovation and technology foundation driving Intel's processor architecture evolution, and future platforms based on them.
Feature Articles
Communications
Speeding Up the Network: A System Problem, A Platform SolutionPat Gelsinger, Hans G. Geyer, and Justin RattnerSome of Intel's senior technologists discuss why we created the new Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology, as well as how we're creating other new technologies and solutions that are moving server platforms to new levels of performance.
Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology Improves Network Performance, Reliability and EfficientlyKeith Lauritzen, Thom Sawicki, Tom Stachura, Carl E. WilsonIntel® I/O Acceleration Technology gets data to and from applications faster and with greater reliability and efficiency, enabling servers to finally start taking better advantage of today's gigabit Ethernet pipes and high-performance processors.
Computing Technologies
Fully-Buffered DIMM Technology Moves Enterprise Platforms to the Next LevelJon Haas and Pete VogtFully-Buffered DIMM technology, a new memory architecture, addresses the scaling needs of both capacity and bandwidth and enables memory to keep pace with processor and I/O improvements in enterprise platforms.
Intel® High Definition (HD) Audio and Dolby* PC Entertainment Experience Deliver Consumer Electronic Audio Quality on the PCErnesto MartinezThe Dolby PC Entertainment Experience*, enabled by Intel® High Definition Audio, allows system designers to develop PCs with the audio quality and surround-sound capabilities that, until now, were only available from consumer electronics devices.
Creating High Performance Embedded Applications Through Compiler OptimizationsLerie Kane The compiler plays an integral part in all application development. Read about some compiler optimization techniques that can help developers create high-performance embedded applications.
Intel® Desktop Board Software Provides Advanced Security, Multimedia, Integration Ajay GargIntel® Desktop Boards now come with an extensive set of software applications that make it easier and less expensive to integrate, set up, manage, and maintain both individual and networked systems.
Standards
The Impact of Universal 3D on Product Lifecycle ManagementHitachi Consulting and IntelUniversal 3D allows CAD/CAM-sourced 3D diagrams and animations to be shared, displayed and utilized in any mainstream application, enabling 3D graphics and animations to be used in a host of areas much later in the typical product lifecycle.
Peter S. Kastner
Cover Story
Platform 2015: Intel® Processor and Platform Evolution for the Next Decade
Shekhar Borkar, Pradeep Dubey, Kevin Kahn, David Kuck, Hans Mulder, Steve Pawlowski, and Justin RattnerThe future of computing promises a positive transformation of our world, and a continued need of ever-greater performance and capabilities. What will platforms and processors powering this future look like in 10 years? Intel's Platform 2015 vision looks ahead at the trends and usages, and architectural innovation and technology foundation driving Intel's processor architecture evolution, and future platforms based on them.
Feature Articles
Communications
Speeding Up the Network: A System Problem, A Platform SolutionPat Gelsinger, Hans G. Geyer, and Justin RattnerSome of Intel's senior technologists discuss why we created the new Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology, as well as how we're creating other new technologies and solutions that are moving server platforms to new levels of performance.
Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology Improves Network Performance, Reliability and EfficientlyKeith Lauritzen, Thom Sawicki, Tom Stachura, Carl E. WilsonIntel® I/O Acceleration Technology gets data to and from applications faster and with greater reliability and efficiency, enabling servers to finally start taking better advantage of today's gigabit Ethernet pipes and high-performance processors.
Computing Technologies
Fully-Buffered DIMM Technology Moves Enterprise Platforms to the Next LevelJon Haas and Pete VogtFully-Buffered DIMM technology, a new memory architecture, addresses the scaling needs of both capacity and bandwidth and enables memory to keep pace with processor and I/O improvements in enterprise platforms.
Intel® High Definition (HD) Audio and Dolby* PC Entertainment Experience Deliver Consumer Electronic Audio Quality on the PCErnesto MartinezThe Dolby PC Entertainment Experience*, enabled by Intel® High Definition Audio, allows system designers to develop PCs with the audio quality and surround-sound capabilities that, until now, were only available from consumer electronics devices.
Creating High Performance Embedded Applications Through Compiler OptimizationsLerie Kane The compiler plays an integral part in all application development. Read about some compiler optimization techniques that can help developers create high-performance embedded applications.
Intel® Desktop Board Software Provides Advanced Security, Multimedia, Integration Ajay GargIntel® Desktop Boards now come with an extensive set of software applications that make it easier and less expensive to integrate, set up, manage, and maintain both individual and networked systems.
Standards
The Impact of Universal 3D on Product Lifecycle ManagementHitachi Consulting and IntelUniversal 3D allows CAD/CAM-sourced 3D diagrams and animations to be shared, displayed and utilized in any mainstream application, enabling 3D graphics and animations to be used in a host of areas much later in the typical product lifecycle.
Better Apple iPod Mini. Same Price.
I went into the San Francisco Apple retail store last Monday evening as a secret shopper. It was jammed! Some young people were using the line of Macs as an Internet cafe, exchanging e-mail and IM. But lots of bixes were leaving the store.
The new iPod Mini has more storage and improved battery life in the same mini form factor. Expect a few more millions of these to fly off the shelves.
Peter S. Kastner
The new iPod Mini has more storage and improved battery life in the same mini form factor. Expect a few more millions of these to fly off the shelves.
Peter S. Kastner
T-Mobile Phone and Data Hacked
While photos of Paris Hilton stored in her phone have titillating value on the Net, all T-Mobile users should be seriously concerned. Do you really want some hacker to have your contacts and all the e-mail and instant messages that have travelled through your phone? Think about it.
Peter S. Kastner
Peter S. Kastner
File Service and Storage for the Common Man
We're steadily moving our lives onto our computers. It's been happening for a while, now, and the trend will only accelerate. There's no stopping it. And with that move comes the problem of data loss and what to do about backups.
I spoke with Peter on the show, a few weeks ago, about Sony's newest home appliance at the time; a server/storage box. Such things are going to be more and more common and the $5000 Sony wants for theirs will come down dramatically, soon. We need such devices. The woman or man with huge stores of media files, personal files and like that simply cannot do a backup onto DVD (much less CDs) in any reasonable amount of time. Expense would prohibit the frequent backups that would be needed, too. If you have a terrabyte of data (not uncommon, these days) you'd need an awful lot of blank DVDs and time to accomplish it.
The solution is a file server with duplicate copies of every file stored on a different physical drive. A RAID array. (RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) With such an array, if one drive fails, it can be replaced and the affected data copied over from the duplicate files on it's opposite in the array. Such devices are widely used in enterprises and consumer units are coming soon at affordable prices. You won't avoid backups all together, but you can do them much less frequently with a setup like this on hand.
Of course, if you wish to "geek out" a little bit, you can have such a machine for almost no money beyond the price of the disk drives. You don't need the type of machine which is sold as a "server". You only need an old PC and some new, reliable hard drives. With the low price of hard drives, these days, it won't cost too much. Linux is the operating system of choice for this, though Windows and the various BSD distribution could be used. If you're serving Windows machines from Linux or the BSDs, you'll need Samba installed, too. All that will take up quite a bit less than 100 Megabytes of your space. Let's say you install an array of 4 250 Gigabyte drives. That will run you less than $400, if you shop carefully and wait for sales. $550 at the worst, if you don't.
You may already have the old PC lying around. If not, you can get one easily enough. Anything more than a 486 will do, though frankly something with a little more processor and a bus speed of 100 MHz or more will help. Even so, the requirements and price are low. With a KVM switch or using remote administration software like WebMin, you don't need a monitor, keyboard or mouse attached at all. There are software packages especially for the purpose, as this email I received after one show demonstrates. It's from E.J. Steinhilber;
"hi jack
on the feb 20 show ... you and peter were talking about running a simple server in the home ... i have been using NASLite ( http://www.serverelements.com/naslite.php ) for about a month now and all seems to be working fine ... Naslite boots from a 3 1/2 floppy or cd ... you can use an old machine and put in up to four any size hard drives ... i am using a 120 pentium with 64M of ram and two 250G hard drives ... i was just wondering if you heard about this and would tell us what you think
enjoy the show every week on the mp3 player ... not able to listen live
--ej"
Thanks, E.J. And since you brought it to my attention, I've tested it just a little on a PII 233 that used to be my bedside machine. With four small drives, it worked extraordinarily well and was easy enough to set up that I think anyone willing to read some can do it. Any reasonably accomplished user willing to read the documents, that is. You don't have to be a geek to come off like one, in this case. I need to point out that NasLite is for sale. Though it contains elements of free software, it is not freeware. The prices are low and I think the product is worth the cost. If that doesn't suit you, it is quite possible to do this without cost.
Previously, I had always used a network install version of Debian GNU/Linux. The download is small, about 35 MB (you can even do it via a set of 20 floppy disks) and the rest of the installation can be done using apt-get, the Debian package management system. On top of the base installation, I put Samba and a firewall, setting it to only allow access from a few, trusted, addresses. File system utilities, of course, and a few networking monitoring tools, too. I chose different sorts of remote access software, often relying on plain old telnet. WebMin would be better and there might be something better than that. I hadn't explored this idea too closely, yet. I favor installing things to the hard drive, rather than using a fragile floppy or a cdrom. Suit yourself in this.
If you need to use more than 4 drives via a PCI IDE disk controller card, it might be wise to use more of a base PC as these cards need a lot of cpu to work at anything like their rated data transfer speed. Even a 500 MHz PII or K6 would strain if one of those cards was installed. Trust me; I've tried it. But that still allows over 500 GB of storage on a regular old PC, with duplicates of every file. On a machine that most folks would give away! More than one of those cards will require even more horsepower, of course, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. You could even just take the old PC and set it up without the drive array, just to see how it goes. Then if you like what you see and have convinced yourself you can do this, go out and get the hard drives.
If you give this a shot, drop into the #icug chat on our server (chat.oncomputers.info) and tell us how it is going. The same goes if you have a problem. We'll do our best to help you get going. As always, you can email me at jack@oncomputers.info.
Jack
I spoke with Peter on the show, a few weeks ago, about Sony's newest home appliance at the time; a server/storage box. Such things are going to be more and more common and the $5000 Sony wants for theirs will come down dramatically, soon. We need such devices. The woman or man with huge stores of media files, personal files and like that simply cannot do a backup onto DVD (much less CDs) in any reasonable amount of time. Expense would prohibit the frequent backups that would be needed, too. If you have a terrabyte of data (not uncommon, these days) you'd need an awful lot of blank DVDs and time to accomplish it.
The solution is a file server with duplicate copies of every file stored on a different physical drive. A RAID array. (RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) With such an array, if one drive fails, it can be replaced and the affected data copied over from the duplicate files on it's opposite in the array. Such devices are widely used in enterprises and consumer units are coming soon at affordable prices. You won't avoid backups all together, but you can do them much less frequently with a setup like this on hand.
Of course, if you wish to "geek out" a little bit, you can have such a machine for almost no money beyond the price of the disk drives. You don't need the type of machine which is sold as a "server". You only need an old PC and some new, reliable hard drives. With the low price of hard drives, these days, it won't cost too much. Linux is the operating system of choice for this, though Windows and the various BSD distribution could be used. If you're serving Windows machines from Linux or the BSDs, you'll need Samba installed, too. All that will take up quite a bit less than 100 Megabytes of your space. Let's say you install an array of 4 250 Gigabyte drives. That will run you less than $400, if you shop carefully and wait for sales. $550 at the worst, if you don't.
You may already have the old PC lying around. If not, you can get one easily enough. Anything more than a 486 will do, though frankly something with a little more processor and a bus speed of 100 MHz or more will help. Even so, the requirements and price are low. With a KVM switch or using remote administration software like WebMin, you don't need a monitor, keyboard or mouse attached at all. There are software packages especially for the purpose, as this email I received after one show demonstrates. It's from E.J. Steinhilber;
"hi jack
on the feb 20 show ... you and peter were talking about running a simple server in the home ... i have been using NASLite ( http://www.serverelements.com/naslite.php ) for about a month now and all seems to be working fine ... Naslite boots from a 3 1/2 floppy or cd ... you can use an old machine and put in up to four any size hard drives ... i am using a 120 pentium with 64M of ram and two 250G hard drives ... i was just wondering if you heard about this and would tell us what you think
enjoy the show every week on the mp3 player ... not able to listen live
--ej"
Thanks, E.J. And since you brought it to my attention, I've tested it just a little on a PII 233 that used to be my bedside machine. With four small drives, it worked extraordinarily well and was easy enough to set up that I think anyone willing to read some can do it. Any reasonably accomplished user willing to read the documents, that is. You don't have to be a geek to come off like one, in this case. I need to point out that NasLite is for sale. Though it contains elements of free software, it is not freeware. The prices are low and I think the product is worth the cost. If that doesn't suit you, it is quite possible to do this without cost.
Previously, I had always used a network install version of Debian GNU/Linux. The download is small, about 35 MB (you can even do it via a set of 20 floppy disks) and the rest of the installation can be done using apt-get, the Debian package management system. On top of the base installation, I put Samba and a firewall, setting it to only allow access from a few, trusted, addresses. File system utilities, of course, and a few networking monitoring tools, too. I chose different sorts of remote access software, often relying on plain old telnet. WebMin would be better and there might be something better than that. I hadn't explored this idea too closely, yet. I favor installing things to the hard drive, rather than using a fragile floppy or a cdrom. Suit yourself in this.
If you need to use more than 4 drives via a PCI IDE disk controller card, it might be wise to use more of a base PC as these cards need a lot of cpu to work at anything like their rated data transfer speed. Even a 500 MHz PII or K6 would strain if one of those cards was installed. Trust me; I've tried it. But that still allows over 500 GB of storage on a regular old PC, with duplicates of every file. On a machine that most folks would give away! More than one of those cards will require even more horsepower, of course, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. You could even just take the old PC and set it up without the drive array, just to see how it goes. Then if you like what you see and have convinced yourself you can do this, go out and get the hard drives.
If you give this a shot, drop into the #icug chat on our server (chat.oncomputers.info) and tell us how it is going. The same goes if you have a problem. We'll do our best to help you get going. As always, you can email me at jack@oncomputers.info.
Jack
Dual and Multiple Core CPUs
This week is Intel's Developer Forum and much has been made of their coming dual-core microprocessors. Desktop, server and mobile versions are all in the works and coming very soon. I've always had a soft spot for multiple cpus and have owned a few duallies. The new chips are going to take all the pain out of it for us users, leaving us with the benefits.
What does it all mean? Well, faster processing. Even though the cpus are running less rapidly than a single unit would be, there are two of them and they'll be executing the longer instructions sets permitted by 64 bit addressing (which means more gets done with each clock cycle). Add in fast internal bus speeds (data transfer speeds between various components of the computer) and faster reading and writing hard drives (Serial ATA) and you have the opportunity for a really large drop in the time it takes you to do things. Only some things, mind you. Adobe's Acrobat Reader isn't going to open much faster. But if you're running Acrobat itself and rendering a large PDF, that will jump, in comparison to what your desktop today does with it. Microsoft Office won't open faster. But those huge spreadsheets in Excel will accomplish their calculations much faster. Depending on all sorts of variables, boosts in processing speed will be between 30% and 70%. Even the lower end of that range is impressive. Many of us have bought entire new systems in the past to get that kind of speed increase. Those that realize boosts near the higher end will think they've died and gone to Heaven.
Cd ripping, video editing, CAD and similar high-intensity tasks will show the most benefit from the extra power. But even if you don't do such things, you can benefit. And if you're one of those folks who simply surfs the Internet, reads and sends email and similar lightweight chores, there will always be single cpu systems available at a bargain price.
We aren't going to see double the work being done when we put in a dual-core cpu. It doesn't work like that. "Housekeeping" chores take up some of the increased capability. Even with the increased housekeeping load and the lowered clock speeds, everyone will get the benefit. Just how much benefit will depend on what you do and how you do it. Oh, and how much RAM you cram into the box. (Some things never change.) With a dual-core cpu and Windows XP Professional, I would calculate that the practicable minimum of RAM is up to 1 GB. No less, if you want to rock. Memory is quite cheap and adding it will pay dividends forever, so don't skimp on it.
Linux already supports multiple processors in it's desktop renditions. Just choose an SMP (Symmetrical Multi-Processing) kernel at installation and go. Windows XP Professional has excellent support for two cpus now and I expect that to increase. Mac OS X already has support for dual cpus and it's sweepstakes odds they will encompass support for dual installations of dual-core processors. Things will get much better in this respect, though, as time goes on. Expect optimizations to all three operating systems to make better use - possibly much better use - of the increased resources without any kind of user intervention. Previously, the user had to set things up carefully to obtain optimal performance. Windows XP Professional pretty much put paid to that and Mac OS X took it to it's present height. It just works. Expect more of the same, with the OS even optimizing itself not only for the extra processor but for the jobs at hand.
Applications will change, too. Don't expect the trend to bloated applications to go away, though. There are just too many programmers who feel free to use whatever resources their code needs with no optimization at all and without regard to user experience. But the good apps, like Microsoft Office, Open Office and many more will be optimized for the new environment(s) and we as users will be able to notice. Such optimizations will really make a perceptable difference. As the revised applications become available, we will really reap the benefits of the new hardware. Trust me on this.
There will be new uses for the increased power at our beck and call, too. Think of being able to transparently search and catalog your entire LAN! Current desktop search utilities seem to take a lot of horsepower. I've only tried two, but they were slow in function and ground reasonably fast systems to a near halt. But as home networks grow (think of large collections of multi-media files as an example) some good way to list what you have on the LAN and keep track of locations of files will be increasingly necessary. In combination with a file server/storage utility device, this type of search will become mandatory for those who otherwise would have file systems large enough to make manual searching prohibitive in terms of time and energy consumed. Let the machine do it for you. Already, I know users with a Terrabyte (1024 Gigabytes!) of files. As one puts one's whole life on her/his computer, this need will only grow more acute. Being able to find and catalog what you have is important and will be more so as time and file sizes march on.
The dual-core cpus will be a boon for us all.
Jack
What does it all mean? Well, faster processing. Even though the cpus are running less rapidly than a single unit would be, there are two of them and they'll be executing the longer instructions sets permitted by 64 bit addressing (which means more gets done with each clock cycle). Add in fast internal bus speeds (data transfer speeds between various components of the computer) and faster reading and writing hard drives (Serial ATA) and you have the opportunity for a really large drop in the time it takes you to do things. Only some things, mind you. Adobe's Acrobat Reader isn't going to open much faster. But if you're running Acrobat itself and rendering a large PDF, that will jump, in comparison to what your desktop today does with it. Microsoft Office won't open faster. But those huge spreadsheets in Excel will accomplish their calculations much faster. Depending on all sorts of variables, boosts in processing speed will be between 30% and 70%. Even the lower end of that range is impressive. Many of us have bought entire new systems in the past to get that kind of speed increase. Those that realize boosts near the higher end will think they've died and gone to Heaven.
Cd ripping, video editing, CAD and similar high-intensity tasks will show the most benefit from the extra power. But even if you don't do such things, you can benefit. And if you're one of those folks who simply surfs the Internet, reads and sends email and similar lightweight chores, there will always be single cpu systems available at a bargain price.
We aren't going to see double the work being done when we put in a dual-core cpu. It doesn't work like that. "Housekeeping" chores take up some of the increased capability. Even with the increased housekeeping load and the lowered clock speeds, everyone will get the benefit. Just how much benefit will depend on what you do and how you do it. Oh, and how much RAM you cram into the box. (Some things never change.) With a dual-core cpu and Windows XP Professional, I would calculate that the practicable minimum of RAM is up to 1 GB. No less, if you want to rock. Memory is quite cheap and adding it will pay dividends forever, so don't skimp on it.
Linux already supports multiple processors in it's desktop renditions. Just choose an SMP (Symmetrical Multi-Processing) kernel at installation and go. Windows XP Professional has excellent support for two cpus now and I expect that to increase. Mac OS X already has support for dual cpus and it's sweepstakes odds they will encompass support for dual installations of dual-core processors. Things will get much better in this respect, though, as time goes on. Expect optimizations to all three operating systems to make better use - possibly much better use - of the increased resources without any kind of user intervention. Previously, the user had to set things up carefully to obtain optimal performance. Windows XP Professional pretty much put paid to that and Mac OS X took it to it's present height. It just works. Expect more of the same, with the OS even optimizing itself not only for the extra processor but for the jobs at hand.
Applications will change, too. Don't expect the trend to bloated applications to go away, though. There are just too many programmers who feel free to use whatever resources their code needs with no optimization at all and without regard to user experience. But the good apps, like Microsoft Office, Open Office and many more will be optimized for the new environment(s) and we as users will be able to notice. Such optimizations will really make a perceptable difference. As the revised applications become available, we will really reap the benefits of the new hardware. Trust me on this.
There will be new uses for the increased power at our beck and call, too. Think of being able to transparently search and catalog your entire LAN! Current desktop search utilities seem to take a lot of horsepower. I've only tried two, but they were slow in function and ground reasonably fast systems to a near halt. But as home networks grow (think of large collections of multi-media files as an example) some good way to list what you have on the LAN and keep track of locations of files will be increasingly necessary. In combination with a file server/storage utility device, this type of search will become mandatory for those who otherwise would have file systems large enough to make manual searching prohibitive in terms of time and energy consumed. Let the machine do it for you. Already, I know users with a Terrabyte (1024 Gigabytes!) of files. As one puts one's whole life on her/his computer, this need will only grow more acute. Being able to find and catalog what you have is important and will be more so as time and file sizes march on.
The dual-core cpus will be a boon for us all.
Jack
Is This What Business Has Come To?
Sit back for a little tale from the customer disservice department. It appears that customer service is a thing of the past for HP. A friend recently ordered three high end customized laptops. Her experience so far as been harrowing to say the least. She first received miscommunication about restore disks, then it's been a downward spiral to the customer service reps giving her "we're sorry, but that's the way HP does things."
What's truly amazing about this saga, is the fact that none of these reps seem to care about the customer. The first rep "Dennis" wasn't able to give many answers at all. Followed by a lady that wouldn't give her name being flat out rude. So I intervened, fired off a letter to hp's ceo inquiring about looking into these issues. To which, I was quickly responded to with "we apologize" and we'll look into it to see how we can resolve things. Then a 2nd response requesting my friends contact info to help. I was impressed, by the quickness of the response. However, this was a major let down. I had my friend call them directly, and much to my surprise the following events took place.
The first rep disconnected her, the 2nd didn't seem to know how to resolve the problem. Then the 2nd lady (keep in mind neither of these reps identified themselves by name at all) referred her to Collin. Collin listened intently, but the only responses he gave to the questions or concerns raised: "I'm sorry or That's the way HP does things." The question was then raised, "If you can't provide good customer support then what will it be like once I have the computers and need tech support?" Much to her amazement absolutely no reply at all. I feel HP really has dropped the ball on this. So I am going to email them this blog and see if that maybe gets someone’s "attention." If not be prepared, there will be segment on the OnComputers show about this. So that this won't happen to any soon to be computer shoppers.
Till next time...
What's truly amazing about this saga, is the fact that none of these reps seem to care about the customer. The first rep "Dennis" wasn't able to give many answers at all. Followed by a lady that wouldn't give her name being flat out rude. So I intervened, fired off a letter to hp's ceo inquiring about looking into these issues. To which, I was quickly responded to with "we apologize" and we'll look into it to see how we can resolve things. Then a 2nd response requesting my friends contact info to help. I was impressed, by the quickness of the response. However, this was a major let down. I had my friend call them directly, and much to my surprise the following events took place.
The first rep disconnected her, the 2nd didn't seem to know how to resolve the problem. Then the 2nd lady (keep in mind neither of these reps identified themselves by name at all) referred her to Collin. Collin listened intently, but the only responses he gave to the questions or concerns raised: "I'm sorry or That's the way HP does things." The question was then raised, "If you can't provide good customer support then what will it be like once I have the computers and need tech support?" Much to her amazement absolutely no reply at all. I feel HP really has dropped the ball on this. So I am going to email them this blog and see if that maybe gets someone’s "attention." If not be prepared, there will be segment on the OnComputers show about this. So that this won't happen to any soon to be computer shoppers.
Till next time...
eBay scrambles to fix phishing bug
Yes, legitimate urls can be used to lead users to illegitimate sites. Not fun. eBay is working to fix it.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Phishing morphs into pharming
Today is the first time I had heard the term "pharming". This article over a month old but it explains pharming.
The surprising thing is that I came across the word in a quote from a Senator who was introducing an anti-phishing act (it would also cover pharming). Maybe the Senate finally has some staffers who understand the Internet and are giving some good advice. Or maybe some Senators are listening to their constiuents and are hearing their concerns. Glory be! Now somehow the DMA and the RIAA will get involved and trash it ;-).
The surprising thing is that I came across the word in a quote from a Senator who was introducing an anti-phishing act (it would also cover pharming). Maybe the Senate finally has some staffers who understand the Internet and are giving some good advice. Or maybe some Senators are listening to their constiuents and are hearing their concerns. Glory be! Now somehow the DMA and the RIAA will get involved and trash it ;-).
ChoicePoint faces inquiry, will curtail data sales
Or my alternate title: Pushing the barn doors a little bit closed with huge gaping gaps after the horse ran off. Enjoy the further escapades of ChoicePoint as outlined in this article.
Distributed Computing Might Be for You!
When I joined Seti@Home in May of 1999, I described it in print as "the common people's last chance to do 'big' science". Oh, how wrong I was! There are any number of distributed computing projects out there to partake in and I encourage anyone with spare CPU cycles to do so. You can check out some of them at the links below. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you don't find something that spins your propellor, you well might if you keep looking.
A Google search on "distributed computing" reveals a lot of papers on projects, schemes and structures that I found interesting. The shortest description is to be found at the
Wikipedia entry on the subject.
You can partake in almost any of these projects (some don't encompass all computing platforms).
Search for Mersenne Prime Numbers.
The "Prime95" application this uses is almost a standard stress test for PCs, too.
Folding@home Folding Proteins for Curing Disease.
Distributed.Net Various projects, mostly having to do with breaking and experimenting in encryption.
BOINC, Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
Seti@home is gradually transferring to BIONC
Climate Prediction is an effort to improve the long-term accuracy of weather and climate forecasts.
Einstein@home Search detector data for gravity wave evidence of pulsars
The Large Hadron Collider is an atom-smasher at CERN in Europe. You can run calculations to improve it's design.
Predictor.net Uses a distributed network to predict protein structure from protein sequence.
A Google search on "distributed computing" reveals a lot of papers on projects, schemes and structures that I found interesting. The shortest description is to be found at the
Wikipedia entry on the subject.
You can partake in almost any of these projects (some don't encompass all computing platforms).
Search for Mersenne Prime Numbers.
The "Prime95" application this uses is almost a standard stress test for PCs, too.
Folding@home Folding Proteins for Curing Disease.
Distributed.Net Various projects, mostly having to do with breaking and experimenting in encryption.
BOINC, Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
Seti@home is gradually transferring to BIONC
Climate Prediction is an effort to improve the long-term accuracy of weather and climate forecasts.
Einstein@home Search detector data for gravity wave evidence of pulsars
The Large Hadron Collider is an atom-smasher at CERN in Europe. You can run calculations to improve it's design.
Predictor.net Uses a distributed network to predict protein structure from protein sequence.
GlobalFlyer -- what now?
I"m sorry for the complete lack of IT news on my part today, but for me this has been a golden day in aviation, and I just can't get my mind wrapped around IT stuff. Oh well, I have used the Web to gather this info.
As I reported earlier, SpaceShipOne will be at EAA Airventure in Oshkosh, WI. Now we have word straight from Sir Richard that the GlobalFlyer will also be there. I've seen a lot of neat things at Airventure including Voyager and Steve Fossett's solo balloon capsule. If you can get there, even for one day, this is a once in a lifetime chance to see them and celebrate these sucessful air and spacecrafts.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
March 3, 2005 - On Thursday morning during his press conference at Salina mission control headquarters, Virgin Atlantic CEO Sir Richard Branson was asked about what will happen to the GlobalFlyer.
“It may be a bit soon to be talking about it, but the Smithsonian have expressed an interest in having her (GlobalFlyer), and I think that’s ultimately where she’ll go. But...it will most definitely go to Oshkosh in July." Citing the 75-80 million hits on the GlobalFlyer website yesterday, Branson added, "There’s an enormous amount of global interest in seeing her. I don’t think we’ll tuck her away in a museum straight away.”
As I reported earlier, SpaceShipOne will be at EAA Airventure in Oshkosh, WI. Now we have word straight from Sir Richard that the GlobalFlyer will also be there. I've seen a lot of neat things at Airventure including Voyager and Steve Fossett's solo balloon capsule. If you can get there, even for one day, this is a once in a lifetime chance to see them and celebrate these sucessful air and spacecrafts.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
March 3, 2005 - On Thursday morning during his press conference at Salina mission control headquarters, Virgin Atlantic CEO Sir Richard Branson was asked about what will happen to the GlobalFlyer.
“It may be a bit soon to be talking about it, but the Smithsonian have expressed an interest in having her (GlobalFlyer), and I think that’s ultimately where she’ll go. But...it will most definitely go to Oshkosh in July." Citing the 75-80 million hits on the GlobalFlyer website yesterday, Branson added, "There’s an enormous amount of global interest in seeing her. I don’t think we’ll tuck her away in a museum straight away.”
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Home Safe
Steve and Global Flyer are back safely!
UPDATE: He's taxiing in. And yes, I'm crying tears of joy.
2nd UPDATE 3/4/05: Late last night I got the final piece of information that many of us have been craving. How much fuel did he land with? According to the Kansas City newspaper the answer, which came from a Scaled Composites team member, is about 1,100 lbs.
UPDATE: He's taxiing in. And yes, I'm crying tears of joy.
2nd UPDATE 3/4/05: Late last night I got the final piece of information that many of us have been craving. How much fuel did he land with? According to the Kansas City newspaper the answer, which came from a Scaled Composites team member, is about 1,100 lbs.
Fossett Back Over U.S. Soil
He MADE it! There was some lost fuel early in the trip, and there was some concern that Fossett wouldn't make it over the looooong hawaii, west coast of the US leg of the trip.
But, I'm glad to see he did.
But, I'm glad to see he did.
Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Support Extended
Here is the skinny on support for Windows9X from Microsoft!
AlaskaJoe
Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Support Extended
AlaskaJoe
Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Support Extended
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Yahoo's 10th Birthday and Free Ice Cream
If you have a Yahoo account, go to your My Yahoo page, click on the birthday link, and get your free coupon for ice cream. Good today only. Sadly, I have no Baskin Robbins nearby, but most of you do so have one on Yahoo.
For everyone, don't miss the link to a copy of the original Yahoo page in 1995 linked from the main Yahoo page (I actually remember that -- plain pages with gray backgrounds -- that was the Web in 1995).
Have fun everyone!
UPDATE: I do have a Baskin Robbins in town so I have my coupon. Yahoo has maps to your nearest Baskin Robbins :-) Why didn't I think of that?
2nd UPDATE: Jim and I went to the Baskin Robbins and got our ice cream. It was fun to sit there and watch the other celebrants walk in with their full page, home printed, coupons.
For everyone, don't miss the link to a copy of the original Yahoo page in 1995 linked from the main Yahoo page (I actually remember that -- plain pages with gray backgrounds -- that was the Web in 1995).
Have fun everyone!
UPDATE: I do have a Baskin Robbins in town so I have my coupon. Yahoo has maps to your nearest Baskin Robbins :-) Why didn't I think of that?
2nd UPDATE: Jim and I went to the Baskin Robbins and got our ice cream. It was fun to sit there and watch the other celebrants walk in with their full page, home printed, coupons.
www.esupport.com update
Well, they just offered me a refund. I accepted the refund, of course. Now Let's see if and when I get it. I will post again as soon as I am sure I have it.
www.esupport.com
Update again.Got an email saying refund issued. I must say a big thanks to this BLOG. I don't think this would have happened so quickly with out it,
www.esupport.com
Update again.Got an email saying refund issued. I must say a big thanks to this BLOG. I don't think this would have happened so quickly with out it,
Bruce Schneier's Security Blog
Choicepoint's CISO Speaks
An interview with Rich Baich, CISO (Chief Internet Security Officer?) of Choicepoint.
As Mr. Schneier and Mr. Baich point out, its social engineering, not a "hack" , aka technical/computer issue.
This is why there are so many levels to protecting one's information.
And NEVER forget, anything is only as strong as the weakest link!
I forget who I'm stealing this from now, but "Be Vigilant!", always :)
MissM
An interview with Rich Baich, CISO (Chief Internet Security Officer?) of Choicepoint.
As Mr. Schneier and Mr. Baich point out, its social engineering, not a "hack" , aka technical/computer issue.
This is why there are so many levels to protecting one's information.
And NEVER forget, anything is only as strong as the weakest link!
I forget who I'm stealing this from now, but "Be Vigilant!", always :)
MissM
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Queen to tap Gates for knighthood
Mark your calendars. Bill will be knighted this Wednesday. Of course he has been and will remain "Sir Bill" in our hearts ;-)
'Perfect storm' for new privacy laws? | CNET News.com
Here's another article that compliments what we were talking about on the last On Computers show. Undoubtedly there will at least be a flurry of new propsed laws that I predict will be fragmented and ineffective, especially after the data aggregating companies get done with Congress.
Sea Launch Current Launch page
After a few "dress rehearsals" the Boeing 702 XM-3 satellite finally made it into orbit yesterday. I watched the live Webcast yesterday evening and it was really exciting to watch a launch that is part of something I use everyday.
There are a couple of real nice photos of the launch and you can watch the archived video as well. This page will eventually be archived so the link to this launch will change to whatever the current launch is, but this is a fun site to bookmark if you are interested in commercial space flight.
As an aside, as I watched the launch live via last evening's Webcast and heard a russian accented voice announce repeatedly "... is nominal" (meaning everything is going as planned and is satisfactory) I couldn't help remember the "Sputnik" days of my childhood. Then came Echo, and Telstar. I remember watching a few minutes live from France way back when on our black and white TV. At that time I could not imagine that communication satellite launches would be considered common. Then again, for the folks at Sea Launch, Boeing, and XM a lot was riding on this launch being a success so no launch is "just a launch" to those who have invested time, money, and great expectations.
More than a few XM Satellite Radio subscribers followed this launch which shows that when it affects your life, it is still engaging.
There are a couple of real nice photos of the launch and you can watch the archived video as well. This page will eventually be archived so the link to this launch will change to whatever the current launch is, but this is a fun site to bookmark if you are interested in commercial space flight.
As an aside, as I watched the launch live via last evening's Webcast and heard a russian accented voice announce repeatedly "... is nominal" (meaning everything is going as planned and is satisfactory) I couldn't help remember the "Sputnik" days of my childhood. Then came Echo, and Telstar. I remember watching a few minutes live from France way back when on our black and white TV. At that time I could not imagine that communication satellite launches would be considered common. Then again, for the folks at Sea Launch, Boeing, and XM a lot was riding on this launch being a success so no launch is "just a launch" to those who have invested time, money, and great expectations.
More than a few XM Satellite Radio subscribers followed this launch which shows that when it affects your life, it is still engaging.
Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer : Flight Tracker
This morning finds the GlobalFlyer and Steve over North Africa -- Algeria at this moment. I find myself keeping this browser window open most of the time that I'm online. He's really flying high at the moment -- about 47,000 feet. His speed shows 314 knots -- I'm guess that's ground speed but I'm really not sure since the tracker doesn't say. (and for any of you pilot types, I know that's really FL470 which is why I'm guessing about the groundspeed vs. airspeed let alone TAS, IAS, etc. -- gosh I wish they would specify that!)
New Bagle damages security software | Tech News on ZDNet
Here we go again! :( I think this is one of the trojans that is getting past NAV. Once again make sure your Anti-Virus is current and up todate.
AlaskaJoe
New Bagle damages security software | Tech News on ZDNet
AlaskaJoe
New Bagle damages security software | Tech News on ZDNet
upgrade your BIOS? don't go to www.esupport.com
Here's what happened. There was an option to set my mother board clock to 133 MHZ. The board would not boot however when I set it to 133 MHz. I wanted this for a 266 MHz Front side bus frequency for a new CPU.
www.esupport.com has a program called BIOS agent. You run it and it submits info on you mother board CPU etc.... I did this. They say call them. I did. I was told a new BIOS would fix the problem of not being able to have a 133 clock frequncy. Well, guess what? I install their new BIOS. Now 133 MHz is not even available as an option any more.
So, I emailed Tech support and customer service. After 5 emails back and forth, with me telling them 133 MHz was no longer an option. They ask "then why did you order it" ? I replied "because it didn't work at the time and I was told the new BIOS would fix the problem".
I know this is a bit of a rant but, I for one will never trust www.esupport.com again. I was lied to.
Mopguy
www.esupport.com has a program called BIOS agent. You run it and it submits info on you mother board CPU etc.... I did this. They say call them. I did. I was told a new BIOS would fix the problem of not being able to have a 133 clock frequncy. Well, guess what? I install their new BIOS. Now 133 MHz is not even available as an option any more.
So, I emailed Tech support and customer service. After 5 emails back and forth, with me telling them 133 MHz was no longer an option. They ask "then why did you order it" ? I replied "because it didn't work at the time and I was told the new BIOS would fix the problem".
I know this is a bit of a rant but, I for one will never trust www.esupport.com again. I was lied to.
Mopguy
Wired News: School RFID Plan Gets an F
This one goes back a way -- to Feb 10, but Jack, Peter and I discussed it on the show yesterday.
I'm the first to admit, that after revisiting the subject, in this case Jack and I were wrong about the information contained on them -- these RFIDs only contained the Student ID number which the school computers then used to track the students. However, when you read about the financial arrangements between the school and the company producing the RFID badges, it still smells. I love this part, "Boylan couldn't say how scanners above bathroom doors would help track attendance. InCom installed scanners outside 7th and 8th-grade classrooms at Brittan and above bathroom doors in a cafeteria. But Boylan noted that the bathroom scanners never worked properly anyway, and the school has since asked InCom to remove them."
At one point the article mentions "School officials could also quickly identify anyone who didn't belong on campus if they weren't wearing an RFID badge." Come again? Does that rely on RFID, or just plain old ID. Unless you have sensors for warm bodies or cameras at the same location as the RFID reader and full time monitoring, how are you going to do that? You recieve a spurious "non-signal" and run out into the hall to find someone lurking without an RFID? Yeah, right.
I'm the first to admit, that after revisiting the subject, in this case Jack and I were wrong about the information contained on them -- these RFIDs only contained the Student ID number which the school computers then used to track the students. However, when you read about the financial arrangements between the school and the company producing the RFID badges, it still smells. I love this part, "Boylan couldn't say how scanners above bathroom doors would help track attendance. InCom installed scanners outside 7th and 8th-grade classrooms at Brittan and above bathroom doors in a cafeteria. But Boylan noted that the bathroom scanners never worked properly anyway, and the school has since asked InCom to remove them."
At one point the article mentions "School officials could also quickly identify anyone who didn't belong on campus if they weren't wearing an RFID badge." Come again? Does that rely on RFID, or just plain old ID. Unless you have sensors for warm bodies or cameras at the same location as the RFID reader and full time monitoring, how are you going to do that? You recieve a spurious "non-signal" and run out into the hall to find someone lurking without an RFID? Yeah, right.
Wired News: No Encryption for E-Passports
This is a follow up to something we discussed on last Sunday's show. It appears our government officials put their convenience over our privacy. So what else is new?
Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer : Home Page
Here's the link to the main Web site for Global Flyer. As I write this no word of a launch. I've been scanning the news channels -- no joy. Last report at the official site is that there were crosswinds -- very dangerous for a craft like this.
UPDATE: Looks like he was off at 47 past the hour. We were able to get one report of his being at over 6500 ft. MSL and climbing. Steve and Global Flyer are headed for Chicago!
UPDATE: Looks like he was off at 47 past the hour. We were able to get one report of his being at over 6500 ft. MSL and climbing. Steve and Global Flyer are headed for Chicago!
Monday, February 28, 2005
Industry analysts attack plans to increase prices. - Feb. 28, 2005
Yes, just what we all want. To pay more for legal (good) but crippled and limited by DRM (bad) music. What does the music industry not understand? Give us a good product at a reasonable price, we buy. Give us an okay product at a so-so price, we buy. Give us a crippled product at a bad price and we don't buy.
GlobalFlyer Scheduled to Take-off Today
I don't have a link to a dedicated article, but take a look the EAA Web site (title link) for details. If you don't know GlobalFlyer is a Rutan designed, Virgin Atlantic sponsored, and Steve Fossett piloted solo non-stop around-the-world on one tank of fuel attempt. All I can say is Godspeed to Steve and the entire team. Come back safely!
Microsoft to Modify Windows XP Product-Activation Policy
Now I know why I had to call in to Microsoft last week to re-activate my WinXP.
Joe
Microsoft to Modify Windows XP Product-Activation Policy
Joe
Microsoft to Modify Windows XP Product-Activation Policy
Geek News Central
"If you’ve ever dealt with PayMaxx online payroll service, you need to get a credit report on yourself ASAP!" excerpt from news.com.com
as an addendum to Peter's post about BofA's loss of tapes, if you will.
MissM
as an addendum to Peter's post about BofA's loss of tapes, if you will.
MissM
Sad news for XM subscribers....
According to Reuters.com: XM raises rates about 30% in April..
XM, whose shares jumped 13 percent, said the monthly subscription for its basic plan will rise to $12.95 from $9.99, effective April 2. For XM, the leader in the nascent pay-radio market that offers more than 100 channels of music and talk programing, it is the first price increase since its national launch in 2001.
MissM
XM, whose shares jumped 13 percent, said the monthly subscription for its basic plan will rise to $12.95 from $9.99, effective April 2. For XM, the leader in the nascent pay-radio market that offers more than 100 channels of music and talk programing, it is the first price increase since its national launch in 2001.
MissM
1001 Postcards : Hurting and Healing (Aunt Edna Virus)
I'm going to admit it. I got this e-mail and since I had a relative with that name, I did a bit of extra checking. I viewed the e-mail safely as text only and saw the IP numbers instead of the URL. Clue number one.
Still, because of the name, I was curious so I went to the http://www.postcards.org site and found this "Aunt Edna Virus" page.
If you have no relative by that name I don't know how you'd ever fall for it. Even with a relative with that name, those who are skeptical first will not have to fix the damages later. Also, if you type the URL in yourself, instead of clicking on the links in the e-mail, it would keep you safe in this case.
Oh, if you are wondering, it appears that you don't get the virus until you visit the bogus Web site. That's why the e-mail is not stopped by nor does it appear as a virus to an antivirus program.
Still, because of the name, I was curious so I went to the http://www.postcards.org site and found this "Aunt Edna Virus" page.
If you have no relative by that name I don't know how you'd ever fall for it. Even with a relative with that name, those who are skeptical first will not have to fix the damages later. Also, if you type the URL in yourself, instead of clicking on the links in the e-mail, it would keep you safe in this case.
Oh, if you are wondering, it appears that you don't get the virus until you visit the bogus Web site. That's why the e-mail is not stopped by nor does it appear as a virus to an antivirus program.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
OCPodcast
This is the On Computers podcast for 02-27-2005. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.
Bank America Lost Data Tapes: What's Lost?
Bank America recently lost 5 data tapes in air transport to a disaster backup site. The tapes contain data including social security numbers on at least 1.2 account master records. Normally, this would be page 18 news. But the fact that the master files contain account data on 60 U.S. senators and tens of thousands of federal employees who use Bank America credit cards to charge incidental federal expenses. That moves the story to page 8 in the Boston Globe!
The reporting is predictable for the national press. No discussion by technology professionals on the implications and probability of compromised data. The implication is that the tapes contain freely readable text data. Highly unlikely.
Let me go out on a limb with this analysis:
The reporting is predictable for the national press. No discussion by technology professionals on the implications and probability of compromised data. The implication is that the tapes contain freely readable text data. Highly unlikely.
Let me go out on a limb with this analysis:
- It is public knowledge that Bank America credit card applications run on IBM mainframes. Therefore, the tapes are likely mainframe data backup tapes.
- Mainframe backup software comes from a variety of sources including IBM and Computer Associates. You would need to understand the backup software's data layout and its compression routines to decode the tapes.
- You'd need an IBM tape drive with the right options for encryption and compression.
- IBM mainframes have a hardware encryption option, which makes files thoroughly illegible with Triple DES (I made that up, but you can look up the specs at IBM's web site). In other words, the data may be double encrypted and compressed.
- The data files probably come from an unloaded database. You'd need to understand the database unload format to be able to reconstruct records, tables or rows.
- Then, with the uncompressed decrypted data, you'd need to map the data to individual records and fields -- without a data map or a program to provide reverse engineering help.
In short, if I hypothetically had those tapes in my hands, it would take tens of thousands of dollars and access to some heavy duty hardware and software in order to -- maybe -- get some private data. Eventually.
So, if you are a federal employee with a Bank America SmartPay credit card, I would not lose any sleep over these lost tapes.
Peter S. Kastner
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Whiteknight, SpaceShipOne, Melvill to Appear at EAA Airventure in Oshkosh this July
As we say in aviation, I was a little behind the power curve in not posting this sooner.
While at the time I watched the test flight and later the X-Prize flights on TV I guessed that they would make the visit, this is the first I knew for sure. And to top it off, are they trucking them there? No, they are flying them in for a grand arrival!
While at the time I watched the test flight and later the X-Prize flights on TV I guessed that they would make the visit, this is the first I knew for sure. And to top it off, are they trucking them there? No, they are flying them in for a grand arrival!
Hey Jack, ever gotten a reward for reading the EULA??
It Pays To Read License Agreements!
Via Slashdot
"OK, let's be honest. You didn't really read the EULA. How do I know? Because hardly anyone does. To prove that point, PC Pitstop included a clause in one of its own EULAs that promised anyone who read it, a "consideration" including money if they sent a note to an email address listed in the EULA. After four months and more than 3,000 downloads, one person finally wrote in. That person, by the way, got a check for $1,000 proving, at least for one person, that it really does pay to read EULAs." -Larry Magid
Via Slashdot
"OK, let's be honest. You didn't really read the EULA. How do I know? Because hardly anyone does. To prove that point, PC Pitstop included a clause in one of its own EULAs that promised anyone who read it, a "consideration" including money if they sent a note to an email address listed in the EULA. After four months and more than 3,000 downloads, one person finally wrote in. That person, by the way, got a check for $1,000 proving, at least for one person, that it really does pay to read EULAs." -Larry Magid
Broadband over power lines set to take off, say proponents
I found this very interesting article about BPL (broadband over power lines) while perusing EE Times.
BTW, if you have never read EE Times (or in this case one of its sister sites), some of the articles go way beyond what a non-engineer can understand. Then again there are some real gems that are readable by anyone who has an interest in technology.
BTW, if you have never read EE Times (or in this case one of its sister sites), some of the articles go way beyond what a non-engineer can understand. Then again there are some real gems that are readable by anyone who has an interest in technology.
Economics Fuels Linux Consolidation
Paris-based Mandrakesoft is buying Brasil's Connectiva for 1.8 M euros. This brings together two profitable companies who expect to be more able to market successfully against the big dogs, Red Hat and Novell's SuSE.
A shock to the Linux egalitarians, the consolidation of the Linux market based on simple economic rules should not be a surprise. It takes profits to open up the claws of capitalist investors, and cash to pay the electricity bills. Alas, there is and can not be a Marxist software utopia.
Peter S. Kastner
A shock to the Linux egalitarians, the consolidation of the Linux market based on simple economic rules should not be a surprise. It takes profits to open up the claws of capitalist investors, and cash to pay the electricity bills. Alas, there is and can not be a Marxist software utopia.
Peter S. Kastner
Itanium Has a Bad Week
The Register reports that Intel has killed Tukwilla, an 8-core Itanium server microprocessor scheduled for the 2007 timeframe. That may leave Intel behind the multi-core server introductions of IBM and Sun.
In what looks like a bad week for Itanium futures, CNET reports that the X3 Hurricane chipset for xSeries announced this week (see separate post) will not support the current generation of Itanium processors. More on this story here.
The only industry player who cares alot about Itanium is HP. Note that Intel employed HP's Itanium designers in Q4-2004, ending the Itanium co-design regime that had both companies grumbling. It's too early to see what -- if anything -- the HP engineers can to the Itanium roadmap. Meanwhile, you can bet HP's chipset engineers are working overtime.
Peter S. Kastner
In what looks like a bad week for Itanium futures, CNET reports that the X3 Hurricane chipset for xSeries announced this week (see separate post) will not support the current generation of Itanium processors. More on this story here.
The only industry player who cares alot about Itanium is HP. Note that Intel employed HP's Itanium designers in Q4-2004, ending the Itanium co-design regime that had both companies grumbling. It's too early to see what -- if anything -- the HP engineers can to the Itanium roadmap. Meanwhile, you can bet HP's chipset engineers are working overtime.
Peter S. Kastner
Friday, February 25, 2005
Will EMC Make the iSCSI Market Successful?
Integrated storage leader EMC finally jumped into the iSCSI market with versions for its midrange Clariion product line, which Dell also rebadges and sells.
iSCSI uses I/O over Ethernet instead of very expensive -- and short -- fibre channel cabling and adapters. But iSCSI is a technology that has been trying to gain market traction since 2000, with modest success. It has half the throughput of fibre channel, and costs have not declined as fast as volume-believers would have liked.
My take is that EMC will help but not ignite the iSCSI market. But a hail-mary volume play by Dell could change the forecast. EMC surely wants to see iSCSI take off as high demand for fibre channel disk drives is constraining EMC's revenue this quarter.
Peter S. Kastner
iSCSI uses I/O over Ethernet instead of very expensive -- and short -- fibre channel cabling and adapters. But iSCSI is a technology that has been trying to gain market traction since 2000, with modest success. It has half the throughput of fibre channel, and costs have not declined as fast as volume-believers would have liked.
My take is that EMC will help but not ignite the iSCSI market. But a hail-mary volume play by Dell could change the forecast. EMC surely wants to see iSCSI take off as high demand for fibre channel disk drives is constraining EMC's revenue this quarter.
Peter S. Kastner
Dell Stops Dating AMD, Goes Back to Steady Intel
In a surprise to almost no one, Dell said it would continue as the biggest Intel-only PC manufacturerer. Long-time suitor, AMD, which looked like a better bet last summer, will have to go back to being a possible instead of likely microprocessor supplier to kingpin Dell. Dell says, with all the expected caveats about keeping options open, that Intel has recovered from its stumbles last year and has a good roadmap for 2005.
Peter S. Kastner
Peter S. Kastner
IBM leads 2004 server market with solid growth
IBM's 6.5% growth in server revenues tops the overall market growth of 6.2%, according to market-watcher IDC. IBM's growth was driven by strong showings by the industry-standard xSeries and the Unix/Linux RISC-based pSeries.
Linux servers grew 35% Y-Y, and now top 9% of total server revenues, as of Q4. Since almost all Linux shipments are on lower-cost industry standard servers (e.g., Intel), the Linux units are well above the 9% level.
Windows server shipments were up an impressive 15%, while Unix servers were up a pedestrian 2.7% -- helped by a very strong 4th quarter. It will be interesting to see if Q4 was a one quarter blip, or the start of a Unix server replacement cycle. Watch closely as IBM, HP, and Sun announce their calendar Q1 numbers in 45 days or so. A solid Unix uptick would be great news to the bottom lines of HP and Sun, while IBM continues to gain Unix market share and would not complain.
Revenue leaders for 2004 in order are IBM, HP, Sun, and Dell.
See IDC market numbers competitor Gartner Group here on this story.
Peter S. Kastner
Linux servers grew 35% Y-Y, and now top 9% of total server revenues, as of Q4. Since almost all Linux shipments are on lower-cost industry standard servers (e.g., Intel), the Linux units are well above the 9% level.
Windows server shipments were up an impressive 15%, while Unix servers were up a pedestrian 2.7% -- helped by a very strong 4th quarter. It will be interesting to see if Q4 was a one quarter blip, or the start of a Unix server replacement cycle. Watch closely as IBM, HP, and Sun announce their calendar Q1 numbers in 45 days or so. A solid Unix uptick would be great news to the bottom lines of HP and Sun, while IBM continues to gain Unix market share and would not complain.
Revenue leaders for 2004 in order are IBM, HP, Sun, and Dell.
See IDC market numbers competitor Gartner Group here on this story.
Peter S. Kastner
Apple iPod Software Update
A busy week from Apple on the iPod front, with new models out earlier this week. See separate posts this week on these models and using an iPod without iTunes.
Don't miss the software update to effect all iPod models (as far as I can tell).
iTunes for Windows stays at version 4.7.1
Peter S. Kastner
Don't miss the software update to effect all iPod models (as far as I can tell).
iTunes for Windows stays at version 4.7.1
Peter S. Kastner
Firefox dusted down with security upgrade | The Register
The bugs fixed are listed here
I immediately went to Tools | Options | Advanced |Checked for updates, and nothing showed up for firefox, though I had just manually updated all my extensions...
Here's the direct link to the firefox page
and here's the bittorrent page
MissM
I immediately went to Tools | Options | Advanced |Checked for updates, and nothing showed up for firefox, though I had just manually updated all my extensions...
Here's the direct link to the firefox page
and here's the bittorrent page
MissM
Four Tape Alternatives Put To The Test - Backing Up To Disk
I found this Tom's Hardware article about tape backup very interesting.
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