Published by Robert Pogson June 20th, 2011
in technology.
I find things to laugh about in the strangest places. Looking at a job advertised for “system administrator” I found these details:
- “You thrive on new technologies and take the initiative to incorporate them into your work”
- “You will have an administrative knowledge of many or all of the following: Win2K, NT, XP, Unix, SQL 2K, Exchange, DNS, DHCP, IIS, IP Routing, Security and AD Policy Management. A+, MCSE, or CCNA certifications are a definite asset.”
No Vista or “7″ anywhere in there… Chuckle 
I don’t know where they are hiding the “new technologies”. Maybe it’s NT.
No kidding. That roundup sounds a lot like a place I worked in five years ago, in a school in the Arctic. It’s a different place but equally locked-in and at the bottom of a deep hole. I wrote them once about using IT in education. They have a high rate of IT staff turnover. I explained what I would change in their system if I were on the job. They did not reply…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson June 20th, 2011
in technology.
Yet another company is trying to escape the terms of the GPL by suing another company that made changes to the Linux kernel.
AVM, a German maker of routers is suing Cybits, a kid-filter company for hacking AVM’s routers to accomplish the filtering. AVM sought a preliminary injunction arguing that modifying the Linux kernel in the routers was a copyright violation. This was appealed to the Court of Appeals who rejected the argument. The issues of the case go back to the District Court tomorrow.
Sheesh… when are people going to give up attacking the GPL? It’s solid and legal. It was designed to preserve the four freedoms: use, examination, modification and distribution. The GPL works. AVM relied on the GPL when it chose Linux for their routers (a great choice, IMHO). Cybits relied on the GPL when it modified the Linux kernel for use in their product. AVM attacking Cybits for making AVM’s product even more useful and attractive to consumers is like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. It happens, but why?
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson June 20th, 2011
in technology.
The guys who go for high performance really do care about performance per watt because the power bill gets paid. The most powerful computer system on the planet (that we know about) uses 9.89 MW running Sparc64s with a total of 640K CPU-cores. That is the fourth best performance in MFLOPs (Million Floating point OPeratiions per second) at 825 MFLOP/W. The average MFLOP/W in the Top500 is 248 MFLOP/W. That’s performance. Turning energy into computing is what the game is all about.
The K Computer’s not Wintel but Linux on SPARC. There is a better way to do IT.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson June 20th, 2011
in technology.
The debate about whether or not some new technologies are complementing or competing with the old “PC” technology, largely Wintel, is heating up. When the suppliers of memory components chime in, I think competition is happening. Kingston Technology makes DRAM, the most popular fast memory for PCs and smart thingies. They are seeing that PCs that typically need 2-4 gB RAM for that other OS to run well are being impacted by smart thingies taking 1-2gB RAM. Thus, the effect is real and affecting supply chains long enough for it to affect their bottom lines.
“A slowdown in the PC market has cast a shadow over the outlook for DRAM memory. However, losses in PC consumption of DRAMs are being offset by rising demand coming from the smartphone and tablet PC sectors. The emergence of cloud computing has also spurred demand significantly for advanced server systems.
…
The market for tablets looks promising for the foreseeable future and I personally don’t think consumers’ thirst for tablet PCs is just a short-term phenomenon.
Kingston itself is also evaluating the possibility of tablets replacing notebooks. Tablets will eat into some notebook sales for sure.
But growth in DRAM consumption is not going to benefit from the rising demand for tablets. Tablets contain up to 2GB of mobile DRAM, when conventional notebooks are built with generally 3-4GB of DRAM. In addition, for tablets there is no space reserved for DRAM upgrade whereas notebooks usually come with slots to allow users to upgrade.
While the popularity of tablets is rising to partially cannibalize the notebook market, demand for home-use desktop PCs are expected to return, which will help drive up total consumption of DRAMs.”
see Digitimes – Looking to ride mobile computing wave: Q&A with Kingston co-founder David Sun
M$ probably agrees or it would not be porting that other OS to ARM… ;=)
- Robert Pogson
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