I know IBM is all over me and my shop to buy Power5+ now vs. waiting for Power6. I think it’s funny the IBM rep said “Power6 is unproven technology”, like he was talking about another Sun product. Oh well he knows I still lov’em.
I woul dlove to wait for Power6 cause that is going to be awesome, but Power5+ is a nice little jump if you on 3 year old Power5 chips and are really close to a new system.
More on what iXsystems is doing to unify the BSD market place. I spend a good 30 minutes on the phone with Brett Davis from iXsystems. You know when two very passonate people get into a conversation and could go on for hours talkaing about things you love, well that was what the conversation with Brett was like. Thanks Brett I was great to talk to you and use up some of your time.
I didn’t want to hang up and I didn’t want to stop talking. He is very much in love with BSD and what iXsystems is doing and I would like to add a little of my take, so am I.
Being and iSeries Admin you learn to apprechaite a good OS, like a fine wine. BSD has always been one of those great smelling OSes that will just run for years and years without problems. I have a FreeBSD Server that has been up for a good long while just running on a quiet little server not bothering anyone doing little things here and there but not failing. Maybe that is why it’s still up. Cause I only tinker with it, but I do know Yahoo is all over OpenBSD and they run lots and lots all day long so there is your pudding that the proof may be found in.
So back to what iXsystems is doing and where they are going. The acquired PCBSD a few weeks back and now have acquired FressBSD Mall and BSD Mall. They plan to merge them and in the end give back 10% of every purchase to BSD. Wow that is just great. I sure hope to see some really great shirts and outerwear from them in the next few months. I told Brett what I wanted to see in a golf shirt.
He also mentioned that there maybe a BSDCON in the US on the 15th anniversary at Berkley. Now that would be an event no one should miss who loves BSD. I think anyone at BSDCan heard the very same thing and I might be repeating old news but I would pack up the VW Bus and head out to Berkley for a good old BSD time.
I would encourage all of you out there to start considering these guys for servers and other devices. They will load BSD and most any Linux on their hardware for you and ship it out the door. I can’t imagine a better way to run your IT needs than from FreeBSD. I am big on the UNIX platform and prefer it on a server vs. Linux in some cases. BSD has always been really stable and the community and commiters have worked all the time to make it better.
So what comes next for iXsystems? Laptops? Desktops? End to end solutions? Who know we all will just have to wait and see. Good luck guys!
So I spent the entire weekend thinking about Java. It’s not everyone favorite language but lets face it the damn thing is pretty popular. Also while I am no fan of where Sun is going or not going with it’s Solaris 10 which it loves for everyone to run but them and the inability to decide on a CHIP for their platform. I wonder who at Sun thinks that offering SPARC, AMD 32 Bit, AMD 64 Bit, Intel P4, Intel Core Duo, Intel 64, and Intel 4 Way is that way to make it in IT. Nothing like confusing the customer from day one. Hey how many different types of CPUs come in that iSeries or pSeries? Oh that would be ONE. One ass kicking Power5+ Chip and with Power6 on the way running at about 5GHz Sun had better be ready to drop those prices.
I do think they got Java out right when the market was looking for something like that.
The idea of write once and run on many is a compelling reason. So with that said I ran to my trusty book shelf and started to read WROX Press Beginning Java2 by Ivor Horton. First Ivor is way to smart for his own good. There are over 1200 pages in this book and not a one is wasted with fluff. If you have enough data in your head to pump out a 1200 page book just for beginners you are way to smart. Hats of to Ivor!
I got to work on Tuesday and talked to some of the Java guys and they pointed me to this page. While Ivor may be the king of Java from WROX, Bruce Eckel is the king of FREE Java learning. You can download his books for free from here and while I learn best with a book in hand I like the idea of FREE! Thanks Bruce!
I may explain later why I am looking into Java but for now lets leave it at that. While I have never been known for my programming skills it frustrates me not to be able to write code. I try to code as much as possible when I have the time and something I need to write, but it’s a struggle for me at times as it is for many people. I would love nothing more than to create via code.
 While I can go ahead and tell you I use NeoOffice on my Mac and have no trouble with it. To think that Microsoft Office for Mac is not going to have problems makes you sound a little naive. I think it’s a wonderfull idea and they should move the Windows PCs to OpenOffice as well.
Software has been wiped from thousands of school computers because of a row over Government funding.
Microsoft Office programs have been ordered to be removed from about 25,000 Apple Macintosh computers in schools.
The Ministry of Education did not renew its deal for the programs, meaning that students using the Apple computers will not have access to common programs such as Excel and Word unless the school buys the software independently. Read the rest of this entry »
Sorry Todd, but your on the hit list. Thank goodness the iSeries Admin is not there, but Cobal and C is? It’s neat to see the skills I have and the stuff that is on that list and know I made the right choices over the years!
Intel the chip maker is showing a new thin laptop. I like it but I know why…..it looks just like a Mac. Even the way the screen hinge works. It’s nice and I like the external screen. That would be handy but I am sure it’s broken pretty quick.
Not me the guy who wrote this article…..
I am a hardcore, long-time Unix user; I first used a version of the Unix operating system in 1985. This web site currently resides on a server running FreeBSD. The servers on the internal clapper.org network also run FreeBSD. My Apple Macbook Pro runs Mac OS X, which, under its slick, shiny UI, is FreeBSD. My previous laptop ran Fedora Core Linux. My employer-supplied development workstation runs Red Hat Linux. (For what it’s worth, I’m registered Linux user #14,359 at http://counter.li.org/.) I wouldn’t dream of running NT, Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 on one of my network’s servers. This document explains why.
If the System p and System i share essentially the same hardware, and if the System i will also get the Power6 processor, what gives with the System p getting all the press yesterday?
IBM’s press release “IBM Unleashes World’s Fastest Chip in Powerful New Computer” set the stage for the world, and many IT news outlets followed IBM’s lead, reporting on the chip’s design, speed, the System p 570, and comparison to HP and Sun Unix servers.
For IBM, mission accomplished: massive dissemination of Power6 news.
Basically, IBM’s new Power6 chip is a 64-bit, dual-core processor with 790 million transistors running at up to 4.7 GHz and eight megabytes of on-chip Level 2 cache. It gets approximately twice the speed as previous generation chips with virtually no increase in energy consumption, and it’s based on IBM’s smaller 65 nanometer chip design. It’s wicked fast.
While I don’t like DELL, and I think they are out to just build the crappiest computer for the lowest price, they have taken to running Ubuntu on them and that is a good thing. They are also choosing to use the right hardware for the solution, but if I were buying a PC I would just go to System76.com and get it from a bunch of guys who know what they are doing and will help you out until you have exactly what you want.
Why do smoke detectors run out of batteries @ 2 or 3 AM vs. say 5 PM? I don’t know who the engineer is that made the smoke detector systems, but in my last 3 places I’ve lived have to loose the backup 9V battery @ 3 AM?
Last night at 3 AM the smoke alarm start going off. Of course Kelly wakes up and says…”I smell smoke”, there was no smoke, maybe she can smell 9V batteries going bad?
Maybe I had just crapped the bed because the stupid smoke alarm was feeling lonely and wanted to wake us up? What ever she was smelling it was not smoke?
The smoke detector in our bedroom in the highest part of the ceiling was going bad. The other problem is that the little RED light that is supposed to tell us the battery is going bad only flashes, and when your tired @ 3 AM you blink allot and you have to really wake up to be able to see it. Bastards!
So off the garage to get the ladder and find a replacement battery. Now the ladder is on the other side of the garage on the wall on the other side of Kelly’s car. Then you have to try not to drop it on the car and manage it back to the house without taking out anything you might value, like a wall or a light?
We actually had a 9V battery in the house(going to get more today). Really the 9V battery was in Kelly’s car for her Mr. Microphone of something, I know I laughed about it but can’t remember what she said she had a battery in her car for?
I changed it and then could not get back to sleep. All of these smoke detectors are wired into the house electrical and all go off when one goes off so they are loud.
Does anyone else have this problem? Do your smoke detectors only decide not to work at odds hours of the night? Am I psyhco or is this a real problem and what is it about the middle of the might and things that are electric. They all seem to want to act up when you are sleeping?
If you take a peek at IT publications outside of the System i market, one term that seems to be all the rage these days is “Software as a Service,” or SaaS. Basically, this is the practice of offering software applications via the Internet instead of licensing them to run on a client enterprise’s own machines.
In our market, the concept isn’t really new. Back in the 80s and into the 90s there were “Service Bureaus,” which offered green-screen apps running on someone else’s AS/400 and largely accessed by private connections. Later came Application Service Providers (ASPs), which added the twists of offering client/server apps over public networks, eventually with HTML interfaces. Then came Managed Service Providers (MSPs), which tossed some networking equipment and services into the mix, as well as the ideas of also being a host to multiple web sites or providing an enterprise with general Internet access.
AudiWorld News bring us a sneak peak at the new 2009 Audi A4 line up. I am not sure if I like the new body. It’s to BMW looking?
“Sources at Audi have confirmed to AudiWorld that the next generation Audi A4 will make its worldwide debut in the fall at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Completely redesigned both inside and out, the B8 A4 will in many ways be similar to the recently introduced B8 A5 and S5 coupés.
With the new A4 just a little over four months away we wanted to give readers a good idea of what to expect inside and out. Matt Daniels has also prepared three exclusive renders of the 2009 A4 (sedan, Avant and S4) which represent our best guess at what the final product will look like. “
While I agree that being unagreeable is fun I would also like to disagree with the premiss that the reason the lower companies like Open Source is to get back at the higher more profitable companies. I think it’s a nice thought and might make sense to someone who never won anything when he was a kid and his mommy always like this brother or sister more it seems like a rediculous argument in that in general the reason why more technical people don’t like Microsoft is becuase of the heavy handed nature of the company and the really crappy product they deliver over and over again only to sell more and more, and while the tide is changing and people are not going for Vista like MS expected I really don’t think that is the reason people get behind open source.
Maybe that is the reason he can see from his office but overall I am not opposed to Windows I just see huge flaws in the way they think and deploy solutions compared to other companies out there. Nice try Howard, but I am not buying what your selling. It’s to simple minded.
“How about if you are a user? Your real goal is to drive down the cost per transaction each year. Theoretically you love the idea, but in actuality it scares the crap out of you.”
I love this that Linux being free scares the crap out of people. Really does it? I think the part that scares the crap out of people is that after almost 20 years of being brain washed they are going to have to learn to actually us a real OS vs. the fisher price one they have been used to. Hell you want to up you up time go buy a Mac and that way you spend some money and got a really great OS and this way Howard can guilt you into thinking the only reason you are using Linux is because you hate some big company?
“A cynic might suggest that the people writing open source software are the ones who are making their daytime living working for a proprietary-solutions vendor and spend their nights tearing down the very house they live in. And that if open source replaced proprietary solutions, these people would not be able to make a daytime living that supports their night time hobby.”
Most Open Sourced projects are being written by guys and gals who super smart and do have day jobs working for”real” companies,most of them are so bored with the trivial work they have to do during the day they can’t wait to get to”their time” so that they can be creative and work on something that is a hobby and something they absolutely love.
Most of the day time projects are not what they work on in the night time. So I think his thinking there is flawed as well. he tries to make you think that these evil people who work so hard to make open sourced software great are only able to do it at the expense of the closed source market….not true and in fact plenty of open sourced projects that hire guys to work on the project and with that said I will be back later for more.
If you want to email your representatives or your local media or a few others on this list just go here. LINK and submit your thoughts
Hey is IBM listening to us? Really? Come on Really?
It looks that way. The Four Hundred (I wish they would change the name) is reporting that IBM has in fact changed the pricing a bit based on customer comments.
After getting lots of feedback from customers, resellers, and independent software developers who have been reacting to the announcement of the user-priced System i5 515 and 525 Power5+ servers, IBM has made some modifications to the way software is priced on the boxes. The change in pricing gives the i5 515 and 525 servers a better fit into the way certain kinds of customers make use of the box, and it also shows that IBM wants to react fast to any feedback from customers to get the pricing right.
When the i5 515 and 525 servers were launched on April 10, there were a number of configurations of each box, which included a different hardware configuration, various software features, and a set number of initial users on the box. (See IBM Goes After Windows with User-Priced System i Servers for the details on the announcement.) The i5 515 came with five users and topped out at 40 users, while the i5 525 came with 30 users and could have an unlimited number of users attached to it. To add users to a base box, i5 515 users add them in bundles of five and i5 525 users buy them in bundles of 10; each user added to the system above and beyond the initial users in each configuration costs $250 to license.
I like it that IBM appears to be listening. I know I pulled aside a few top level IBM people at COMMON and said a few things about the new systems. Could I the ever so humble me have be apart of this change in pricing…..probably not, but it’s nice to see IBM react to users and customers this fast. I knew I liked the new crew running the System i for some reason.
Marketing Linux® has always been a tricky proposition. As a community, we have relied on corporations who have a stake in the Linux operating system to market Linux to the world at large. Today, we have an opportunity to change that, and make Linux marketing as much a community effort as Linux development. That effort begins with the Tux 500 project.
Our goal is simple: we want to collect community donations to enter a Linux sponsored car in the 2007 Indianapolis 500. We need your help! If less than 1% of the Linux community donates $1, this will happen… will you do your part?
I just got back from the track… and what a day for Chastain Motorsports… what a day for Roberto Moreno… what a day for the Linux community!
For those of you who missed it, with less than 1 hour remaining in qualifications for the 91st Indianapolis 500, team owner Tom Chastain made a bold decision. Rather than take a chance on being bumped late in the day, he pulled their already qualified car to see if they could qualify with a higher speed. The idea being that they would put more pressure on the unqualified teams.
Roberto Moreno took the track, and put together the best 4 lap average since the day began… 220.299 mph! This put the car safely in the field, and sits us on the inside of row 11 for the race next weekend!
Comments : While I understand this move and what they are trying to do, I really don’t understand this move. Wait until next year when you have more money. We need to find the face of Linux and have him there as well. There needs to be a concerted effort rather than this willy-nilly effect we seem to being doing now. I really admire the thought behind the cause, but I think with a little more work we could have pulled off a home run with more magnitude but they do get an A for effort.
IBM said it was coming and I heard over a year ago they were running the Power6 over 5 GHz….The problem was that they could not cool it. I can’t wait for the System i to get Power6 so that we can see the most powerful OS on the most powerful chip alive.
I sure hope Sun is talking about what they are going to do with that combo, along with AiX on Power6 which should come out later this year….watch out Sun cause as much as you all like to talk about how much Solaris 10 is so awesome….and it’s not, but AiX on Power6 is going to rock!
Not that I think Linux is to blah, but the person writing the post did…kind of. I am starting to like FreeBSD over Solaris that is for sure. I see the resilience in FreeBSD that I don’t see in Linux right now, but I see lots of work on Linux that is going all over the place. And while Linux runs crazy trying to catch up with Windows, FreeBSD and other BSD’s are working just to make a nice little impact and find their place in the FREE market. I have to admire them for their work and diligence.
LINK - He plays with PC-BSD 1.3
Now my brother Michael can get one and the coolest brother I know!
It won’t work in Europe? Why would you make the coolest phone on the earth and then not support going to Europe?
“That means that despite the phone’s high price, users won’t be able to roam with it into Europe, where operators use different frequencies. The phone uses GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology and the EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution) wireless data standard. Apple has said the phone will ship initially only in the U.S. but many GSM phones today, even on the low end, are capable of operating in both Europe and the U.S.”
David | 
05 31st, 2007| 