2012 May 11 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for May 11th, 2012

HP Cloud Services in Public Beta

Published by Robert Pogson May 11th, 2012 in technology. 0 Comments

HP has announced a public beta of HP Cloud services. Price for the beta is 50% of the regular price.

It looks like

computing prices are 1 to 4 cents per gB-core/h depending on classification from small to super-dooper large,
object storage is 12 cents per gB/month,
storage requests are 1 cent per K requests,
uploads are free and downloads are 5-12 cents per gB, and
cloud bandwidth is 7 to 39 cents per gB depending on billing address and not where the content is consumed.

It’s always fun to shop and, at these rates, this blog would cost about 4 cents/h for compute, 25 cents for bandwidth and 36 cents/month for storage, about $30/month… I think I will stay where I am. Still, it must be attractive for a lot of businesses to do a calculation like this instead of maintaining staff, real-estate, power-company, etc. It’s an interesting business model, the customer taking care of the content mostly and the supplier taking care of a bunch of machines somewhere.

“HP Cloud Services offer a public cloud infrastructure along with platform services and cloud solutions. Designed with OpenStack™ technology, the open-sourced-based architecture ensures no vendor lock-in, improves developer productivity, features a full stack of easy-to-use tools for faster time to code, provides access to a rich partner ecosystem, and is backed by personalized customer support.”

I expect HP will find customers for this thing. It’s a good example of a business using Free Software to make money. HP is one of 170 companies contributing to OpenStack.

HP: HP Moves HP Cloud Services to Public Beta.

- Robert Pogson

Larry Ellison Lied Under Oath

Published by Robert Pogson May 11th, 2012 in technology. 1 Comment

During the trial, Oracle v Google, Larry Ellison was a witness and gave false testimony even after declaring he had personal knowledge of Java:
“When Larry Ellison was asked whether the Java APIs are needed to use the Java language, Google objected on the ground that the question called for expert testimony. RT 290:15-19. The Court overruled the objection, but only after Mr. Ellison assured the Court that he was testifying based on personal knowledge. RT 290:20-24. Mr. Ellison then testified that a UK company named Spring had built its “own Java environment” called Spring, which used the Java language, but not the Java APIs. RT 290:25-291:6.
Mr. Ellison’s testimony was incorrect. The Spring framework is open source software, and the documentation for the Spring framework is readily available on the Internet. This documentation demonstrates that Mr. Ellison’s testimony was incorrect, and that the Spring framework uses the J2SE APIs. For example, the Spring package “org.springframework.ui” has a class named “ModelMap,” which is a subclass of “java.util.HashMap” —a class that is in the accused java.util package. This Spring class implements the interfaces Serializable (part of the accused java.io package), Cloneable (part of the accused java.lang package) and Map (part of the accused java.util package).”

See GOOGLE’S MAY 10, 2012 COPYRIGHT
LIABILITY TRIAL BRIEF

I wonder how many layers of lying are involved. Did he lie about “personal knowledge”, the use of the Java API from SUN by a company or both? It’s not as if there was a matter of opinion or point of view involved. This was a “yes or no” situation. Did Spring use SUN’s Java API or not?

Google’s response was to a list of questions posed by Judge Alsup after he read an EU decision about non-copyright protection for APIs.

Oracle is in pretty deep doo-doo with this judge. Either Oracle is an evil corporation or they have a really evil legal firm running the case or both. Lies could fit either or both scenarios.

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.