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LinuxWorld Highlights
Jan Stafford writes "Bernard Golden over at SearchEnterpriseLinux was wowed by the many hardware and software products on display at LinuxWorld. Among the highlights include Blackdog, a complete Linux server the size of a deck of playing cards and Astaro a bundled security suite designed for corporations. He also outlines the good, bad and funny trends of the convention."
What about the toaster powered by netBSD that was shown at LinuxWorld?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
from the article:
"I knew that vendors hired attractive women to staff their booths, hoping to attract the mostly-male attendees of technical conferences, but I had no idea that the subterfuge extended to the other half of the species. Live and learn!"
Or maybe they're just extending to the other *tenth* of the species, if you catch my drift.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
That Blackdog is amazing for just $200. I want one!
seems like the last one he was at was '00 in san jose. now THAT was a party. ever since has been drab, and this one was just about as average as the rest of the west coast/bay area ones since.
.org pavilion being relocated to the mezzanine was lame - but it was still good to be able to walk up to the folks at gentoo, kde, moz and eff and give them the props they deserved.
although, yeah,
~A
Linux, Vai, Satch and Guitars.. that is the life ICQ# 7357858
maybe i'll order one myself. They ought to put up some demo's there. ;-)
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Looking at the website, I don't think it's really intended to be used as a server - at least not primarily. It is, however, an amazingly cool little portable PC - powered over another PC's USB, steals the host's input/output devices - how cool is that! I'm quite tempted to buy one myself. Just a pity that it only has 64Mb onboard RAM....
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
And here the first thought that came to my mind when the "tenth" reference was made was that a tenth of the participants of LinuxWorld are female!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Seems like I've seen a similiar specification for the Blackdog somewhere before.
What I don't understand is why the MMC card on these devices is limited to 512mb. Sandisk and others already offer 1, 2, and 4GB high-speed CF cards. Is it an issue of pre-formatting, the software driver, or something else I'm missing? It would be kind of cool to have an external RAID device consisting of multiple CF cards plugged into a "CF bus."
Mentioning the fact that mambo (open source) actually beat Firefox 1.0.5, Linux Terminal Server Project and IBM's Derby 10.1 to the Best Open Source Solution award would have made this review slightly less incomplete.
From TFA:
"I was also impressed by Coraid, maker of ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE), hardware. The AoE protocol allows Ethernet-connected hard drives. What's so great about that? It offers the ability to build SANs without the cost and complexity of fibre channel or iSCSI. "
Wow, wow, wow! Hold it right there!
Let remind ourselves here that he uses the word "SAN" in a very loose sense.
There's a heaven-and-sky difference between this and good old fibre channel SAN.
I don't know who this pal is, but I figure were he familiar with the traditional SANs, he wouldn't have toss out the SAN word just like that.
Then he sez:
"Essentially, this allows machines to write data via a low-level Ethernet protocol using a machine's standard NIC card. To me, this offers the potential to allow SMBs to get access to SAN functionality previously unaffordable to them."
About "previously unaffordable". It can't be more affordable than iSCSI (as the network and the adapters used are the same), so except for the novel (read: niche, unsupported, unreliable and most likely untested - especially when compared to the industry-standard and well-tested iSCSI protocol) protocol, I don't see how this can be attractive to any company, including the suicidal SMBs (SMEs).
I mean, what would you use this kind of "SAN" for? ERP? Oracle? Mail? Never.
It's too bad that he missed to call any of that stuff "mission-critical".
Oh, well - typical Linux enthusiast attitude that makes IT people laugh. Then again, it's in line with what we usually get to read here.