You can fit one of the latest bladeserver chassis from IBM,HP etc into about 12U or so of rack space. Inside that box you can combine a bunch of powerful servers, storage, multiple switched networks and I/O buses across mid planes, back planes, FC switches, etc. And some also make room for a disk array inside the same chassis. You can really call them "data centers in a box". This is not good for Cisco. HP/IBM, etc. will OEM Cisco I/O devices as part of the config options for their blade platforms. But in that scenario it doesn't say Cisco on the front of the box anymore. As blade centers proliferate Cisco becomes marginalized in this market.
I wouldn't be surprised if Cisco's blade platform ends up supporting blade servers from the other vendors. To me that makes more sense from Cisco's point of view. With blade platforms its not about the server - its about the infrastructure devices you plug into it along side all those thin little blades. Does Cisco really want to become a server vendor? I don't think so. Blade servers themselves are commodotizing rapidly. The most expensive parts are the special switches & other I/O devices that you add to it to convert it from a bunch of blade servers sharing a common power supply and cooling to a complete data center in a box. Cisco wants their name on that box. And maybe you'll see little IBM, HP, Dell etc. logos on the blades that are installed in them.
Most IBMers (like me) live with their thinkpads joined to their hips. Do you want to try migrating 320K employees from Windows to Linux in one go? Think about organizational impact. Think about your customer base. Give some thought to the migration challenges that are illustrated in this book (of which I was the project leader)...
IBM is a solutions company. A lot of us need to live (compute) within the same environments as our clients do. As more companies consider Linux on the desktop, more of our business will head that way, and consequently more IBMers will to.
So you should look at this announcement in context. This offering is a yet another clear indication that Desktop Linux is gaining market momentum, and IBM sees a need (and is making a big investment in internal transformation as well as product offerings) to be able to meet the needs of clients that are increasingly demanding more diversity in client computing solutions.
Convert it to Wiki - O'Reilly - you listening?...
on
Small Form Factor PCs
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Here is a key comment in the review:
That said, some of the information will lose value over time. For example, the specific gumstix computer that was used does not appear to be available anymore. This is probably a good thing since the authors had to make some adjustments to get the 200 Mhz Bluetooth enabled version to work. I mention it only to point out that the information on the specific systems and the other instructions will lose value over time. It is impossible to future proof a work likes this.
Actually - I think it is possible to "future proof" a book like this. How?...
Convert the book to a wiki.
I've already bought the book. What if I now want to upload my own storyline as well as pictures of my project to a community maintaining an on-line version of same book? A wiki would allow anyone who has bought the book (thus they have an ID/PWD for accessing the PDF originally) to use the same login to access an online wiki based version of the book. You won't lose any revenue from account sharing, since the same person sharing their login could just as easily share the PDF file. *But*, by putting it into an access controlled wiki for those of us who have bought the book, you give us the opportunity to share our stories... to make major and minor changes as necessary as we go through the different howtos and find that things have changed slightly, components have uprev'd, etc. And, if you managed the wiki properly you might even maintain a revenue stream on the publication long after it has originally published, not because techies will want to buy an old book, but because when they do they know they'll also get access to the latest updates in the "community of users" participating in the wiki. You might be able to harvest the best that the wiki has to offer and spin that back into a PDF version, then spin that back into a wiki again. And of course all this community activity on an O'Reilly hosted site means traffic, eyeballs, impressions, etc. etc....
I know this won't work for every book and every topic. But in the case of this one it seems like a no brainer to try since the book is really just a short intro followed by a bunch of essentially standalone howto chapters. Perfect for a wiki IMO...
Newsvine always seems to have a pretty high signal to noise ratio. I'm not at all familiar with how Yahoo's message groups used to work. I can tell you that Newsvine has a very interesting formula going for a user driven interactive news site.
The link to the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines shows a horizontally oriented graphical table of contents - colored table cells to contain links to each section. And then whole page is rendered with with all of the editable sections rendered to show visual containment inside a bunch of DIVs, w/forward/backward nav, etc. Does anyone know if that is core, or some type of mediawiki extension? I'd like to experiment with it further. Can someone point me to the source of that extension for mediawiki? Its very interesting.
A quick scan of posts so far in this thread indicates (to me at least) that many of you aren't getting it. Definitely some fault for that goes back to the parakey = OS confusion sowed by the spectrum article. In case you missed it in this thread, Blake clears some of that up here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=204087&cid=166 81717
The only thing I've got to go by is the Spectrum article, so I'm going to read into it *a lot*. So if my assumptions are correct you should be very excited by Parakey for the following reasons:
Its evolutionary: the web browser platform and programming methods have been continually evolving to support richer and richer client side applications (AJAX a great example). Parakey takes the rich client evolutionary process in the browser to its obvious next big step: the browser becomes the desktop (hey Spectrum editors: not the underlying OS!) Why is this great? Your PC OS has to run only one application, instead of 10 or 20 or so. Everything happens within the browser. You don't give a flip what OS is running on the client - the "webtop" abstracts it away, as if it were just the engine under the hood of your car. Hmmm - would I want to pay for Windoze Vista (or OSX) if the only thing I'm going to do is run a full screen browser on it 100% of the time? Maybe there is a free OS alternative out there that could do the job very well and not cost a cent?
The KISS Principle is obviously driving Parakey innovation. That much is very clear from the Spectrum article. And the participatory internet feeds on simplicity as the differentiator between winners and losers in the application space. So I'm gonna say it now... its totally Web 2.0 (sorry Blake - I means this in the most technically positive light)... techies cringe, investors rejoice!...:-)
Its disruptive. Windows - OS X - KDE - GNOME, etc... they are all amazing technical achievements. How necessary will they be in the years to come? Why do we need an OS/GUI/Session Manager/whateverthehellyoucallit that can become so complex it makes me think of a 1ft thick Swiss Army Knife? The browser-as-the-desktop model I hope will cause the KISS model to reign supreme in next generation human/computer interface design. (OK - kudos to the Gnome/Ubuntu crowd - they do get it - for proving that simplicity is better for the masses)
Blake's philosophy seems to fit for the, oh... 90%-95% or so of people in the world that only need to use computers to accomplish some basic things like communicating and sharing content. Sure the browser-as-the-desktop model doesn't work for someone who lives in Photoshop for example.
For profit or not, this is a great project....Blake - do I get it?... and - who do I send a resume to?:-)
My immediate thought... Oracle Linux = Oracle application appliance. How much easier would it be to support your install base if you know that they are running a tuned "appliance", instead of combination of products that Oracle just happens to be running along side? Virtualization is obviously a big play in hypothetical scenario too.
... and supported. Here are the Dell Open-Source Desktops.But, as you read the fine print you learn that there is nothing "Open-Source" about these desktops except the included FreeDOS media kit.
so the/. editors froth at the mouth whenever apple makes a move. Try posting something that will generate lively discussion - what is so interesting about Apple bumping their notebook speeds up a notch?????
The execs have nothing to lose and everything to gain from this type of meeting. They can hear geeks talking about IT this and IT that and see how the company (and their whole little world) revolves around their IT centric viewpoint. They can hear the smarter IT guys providing constructive criticism and feedback, or maybe even about methods they've researched that may save some budget $$s. I think the really smart IT guys are going to talk less and listen more.
So many times I've worked (in a consultative capacity) with different IT shops. One thing I always run into is a totally IT centric viewpoint of the company. I can't blame a lot of well meaning techs for this, but at the same time you should never forget that you work for a cost center, not one of the core departments generating revenue for the company. To make the most of a meeting like this, I (as an IT guy) would focus on learning more about the *business* that is paying my paycheck, and then try to translate that knowledge into a better understanding of how IT can make the business more successful.
I once had a consulting gig in the IT department of a large contruction company. At lunch one day their new CIO boasted that he is now working for an information technology company that just happens to design and manage large construction projects as well.
Ivan - I like your impassioned response. Many other posts in this thread are hitting the nail on the head as well.
One comment - you say: "...Now, if a corporation decides to distribute (sell) the modified software, section 3 of the GPL requires them to provide the exact same freedoms that they enjoyed while creating the modified version of the software. I hope you will agree with me that this is perfectly fair."
Pleading about what is and isn't fair just doesn't cut it. If you want to argue business w/the shills at Forbes, then stick to what matters:
...Now, if a corporation decides to distribute (sell) the modified software, section 3 of the GPL requires them to provide the exact same freedoms that they enjoyed while creating the modified version of the software. This is a contractual obligation.
We're so glad to now have you aboard here at YYZ corporation. The first thing you need to do is go through our IT department orientation. That is our 'information textile department' in case you thought otherwise. Yes, here at YYZ we have been very successful in converting our old IT organization into the new wearable computing strategy. We even use the new high bandwidth proximity cuffs for those huge data transfers that just can't wait. All you have to do is click wrists! Plus, we have the new notification collars for IM'ing that give you lots of different physical stimulation choices (pretty much everyone hated the buzz collars). We use the new integrated 'eSkin' data suits, and we have many new style choices just in. If you'll step right in here, we'll get your measurements and issue you a set of eSkins. After that, I'll take you to the cafeteria and show you how to sit in the new recharging chair seats.
To help balance the federal budget deficit and preemptively reduce highway accident rates, the Federal government today announced that all registered car owners will be sued in federal court today. The lawsuit requires all defendants to comply by immediately bringing their registered vehicles to a government run repair center and have a speed governor installed. Specifically, this lawsuit applies to all vehicles that have a speedometer designed to indicate speeds higher than the maximum allowed by law.
Ashcroft... "Of course someone who buys a car equipped with a speedometer that indicates speed ranges higher than the legal limits clearly intends to break those limits."
President Bush commented... "Well, if you break the law then you should be punished. I have never gotten a speeding ticket, and if I did then it would definitely be based on faulty intelligence - and I'm definitely aware of anything faulty at this point. In fact, if you're speeding, then you're - you're probably a terrorist. Its a good law."
Slashdot Mirror
...plane and simple.
...the hot air from the 2012 US election cycle will cancel this out.
I bet this is just political posturing so that MS will cough up more free SW and influence $$$ for their Bureau of State Software (BS SW for short...)
You can fit one of the latest bladeserver chassis from IBM,HP etc into about 12U or so of rack space. Inside that box you can combine a bunch of powerful servers, storage, multiple switched networks and I/O buses across mid planes, back planes, FC switches, etc. And some also make room for a disk array inside the same chassis. You can really call them "data centers in a box". This is not good for Cisco. HP/IBM, etc. will OEM Cisco I/O devices as part of the config options for their blade platforms. But in that scenario it doesn't say Cisco on the front of the box anymore. As blade centers proliferate Cisco becomes marginalized in this market.
I wouldn't be surprised if Cisco's blade platform ends up supporting blade servers from the other vendors. To me that makes more sense from Cisco's point of view. With blade platforms its not about the server - its about the infrastructure devices you plug into it along side all those thin little blades. Does Cisco really want to become a server vendor? I don't think so. Blade servers themselves are commodotizing rapidly. The most expensive parts are the special switches & other I/O devices that you add to it to convert it from a bunch of blade servers sharing a common power supply and cooling to a complete data center in a box. Cisco wants their name on that box. And maybe you'll see little IBM, HP, Dell etc. logos on the blades that are installed in them.
Programming the Cell Broadband Engine: Examples and Best Practices
Ok - now I've said it... start using it!
Most IBMers (like me) live with their thinkpads joined to their hips. Do you want to try migrating 320K employees from Windows to Linux in one go? Think about organizational impact. Think about your customer base. Give some thought to the migration challenges that are illustrated in this book (of which I was the project leader)...
Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2
IBM is a solutions company. A lot of us need to live (compute) within the same environments as our clients do. As more companies consider Linux on the desktop, more of our business will head that way, and consequently more IBMers will to.
So you should look at this announcement in context. This offering is a yet another clear indication that Desktop Linux is gaining market momentum, and IBM sees a need (and is making a big investment in internal transformation as well as product offerings) to be able to meet the needs of clients that are increasingly demanding more diversity in client computing solutions.
Convert the book to a wiki.
I've already bought the book. What if I now want to upload my own storyline as well as pictures of my project to a community maintaining an on-line version of same book? A wiki would allow anyone who has bought the book (thus they have an ID/PWD for accessing the PDF originally) to use the same login to access an online wiki based version of the book. You won't lose any revenue from account sharing, since the same person sharing their login could just as easily share the PDF file. *But*, by putting it into an access controlled wiki for those of us who have bought the book, you give us the opportunity to share our stories... to make major and minor changes as necessary as we go through the different howtos and find that things have changed slightly, components have uprev'd, etc. And, if you managed the wiki properly you might even maintain a revenue stream on the publication long after it has originally published, not because techies will want to buy an old book, but because when they do they know they'll also get access to the latest updates in the "community of users" participating in the wiki. You might be able to harvest the best that the wiki has to offer and spin that back into a PDF version, then spin that back into a wiki again. And of course all this community activity on an O'Reilly hosted site means traffic, eyeballs, impressions, etc. etc....
I know this won't work for every book and every topic. But in the case of this one it seems like a no brainer to try since the book is really just a short intro followed by a bunch of essentially standalone howto chapters. Perfect for a wiki IMO...
Newsvine always seems to have a pretty high signal to noise ratio. I'm not at all familiar with how Yahoo's message groups used to work. I can tell you that Newsvine has a very interesting formula going for a user driven interactive news site.
The link to the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines shows a horizontally oriented graphical table of contents - colored table cells to contain links to each section. And then whole page is rendered with with all of the editable sections rendered to show visual containment inside a bunch of DIVs, w/forward/backward nav, etc. Does anyone know if that is core, or some type of mediawiki extension? I'd like to experiment with it further. Can someone point me to the source of that extension for mediawiki? Its very interesting.
Who do you think is going to be in the best position to host all that video content? ...the 'plex of course.
The only thing I've got to go by is the Spectrum article, so I'm going to read into it *a lot*. So if my assumptions are correct you should be very excited by Parakey for the following reasons:
For profit or not, this is a great project.
My immediate thought... Oracle Linux = Oracle application appliance. How much easier would it be to support your install base if you know that they are running a tuned "appliance", instead of combination of products that Oracle just happens to be running along side? Virtualization is obviously a big play in hypothetical scenario too.
... and supported. Here are the Dell Open-Source Desktops. But, as you read the fine print you learn that there is nothing "Open-Source" about these desktops except the included FreeDOS media kit.
so the /. editors froth at the mouth whenever apple makes a move. Try posting something that will generate lively discussion - what is so interesting about Apple bumping their notebook speeds up a notch?????
...now if only it would work
An interesting sample would be the output from analyzing the Prez's speach tonight. Please - pretty please!... ;-)
The execs have nothing to lose and everything to gain from this type of meeting. They can hear geeks talking about IT this and IT that and see how the company (and their whole little world) revolves around their IT centric viewpoint. They can hear the smarter IT guys providing constructive criticism and feedback, or maybe even about methods they've researched that may save some budget $$s. I think the really smart IT guys are going to talk less and listen more.
So many times I've worked (in a consultative capacity) with different IT shops. One thing I always run into is a totally IT centric viewpoint of the company. I can't blame a lot of well meaning techs for this, but at the same time you should never forget that you work for a cost center, not one of the core departments generating revenue for the company. To make the most of a meeting like this, I (as an IT guy) would focus on learning more about the *business* that is paying my paycheck, and then try to translate that knowledge into a better understanding of how IT can make the business more successful.
I once had a consulting gig in the IT department of a large contruction company. At lunch one day their new CIO boasted that he is now working for an information technology company that just happens to design and manage large construction projects as well.
That CIO did not last long at that company.
Ivan - I like your impassioned response. Many other posts in this thread are hitting the nail on the head as well.
...Now, if a corporation decides to distribute (sell) the modified software, section 3 of the GPL requires them to provide the exact same freedoms that they enjoyed while creating the modified version of the software. This is a contractual obligation.
One comment - you say: "...Now, if a corporation decides to distribute (sell) the modified software, section 3 of the GPL requires them to provide the exact same freedoms that they enjoyed while creating the modified version of the software. I hope you will agree with me that this is perfectly fair."
Pleading about what is and isn't fair just doesn't cut it. If you want to argue business w/the shills at Forbes, then stick to what matters:
this will get you added to spam lists fast - make some bids that you know you'll lose on - or post something for sale
You'll get on every list going
We're so glad to now have you aboard here at YYZ corporation. The first thing you need to do is go through our IT department orientation. That is our 'information textile department' in case you thought otherwise. Yes, here at YYZ we have been very successful in converting our old IT organization into the new wearable computing strategy. We even use the new high bandwidth proximity cuffs for those huge data transfers that just can't wait. All you have to do is click wrists! Plus, we have the new notification collars for IM'ing that give you lots of different physical stimulation choices (pretty much everyone hated the buzz collars). We use the new integrated 'eSkin' data suits, and we have many new style choices just in. If you'll step right in here, we'll get your measurements and issue you a set of eSkins. After that, I'll take you to the cafeteria and show you how to sit in the new recharging chair seats.
...this too, shall pass.
To help balance the federal budget deficit and preemptively reduce highway accident rates, the Federal government today announced that all registered car owners will be sued in federal court today. The lawsuit requires all defendants to comply by immediately bringing their registered vehicles to a government run repair center and have a speed governor installed. Specifically, this lawsuit applies to all vehicles that have a speedometer designed to indicate speeds higher than the maximum allowed by law.
Ashcroft... "Of course someone who buys a car equipped with a speedometer that indicates speed ranges higher than the legal limits clearly intends to break those limits."
President Bush commented... "Well, if you break the law then you should be punished. I have never gotten a speeding ticket, and if I did then it would definitely be based on faulty intelligence - and I'm definitely aware of anything faulty at this point. In fact, if you're speeding, then you're - you're probably a terrorist. Its a good law."
It seems a bit off base to draw comparisons between 'professional programmers' and 'open source programmers'.
How may open source coders out there make money at what they do? Is it not possible to be a professional open source programmer?