The Woz Likes Android for the Future!

Woz is a character… and I am sure Steve must be really grumnpy, but the Woz is jazzed over the Android OS for phones!

Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform

“Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, has never been one to mince words. Today’s no different as demonstrated in an interview with the Dutch-language De Telegraaf newspaper in The Netherlands. The first revelation is an admission that Apple had collaborated with a well-known Japanese consumer electronics company in 2004 to develop a phone that was ahead of its time. Woz is quoted as saying that while Apple was content with the quality, it ‘wanted something that could amaze the world.’ Obviously, the phone was shelved followed by Apple’s announcement of the iPhone in January 2007.

Woz then moved on to the topic of Android saying that Android smartphones, not the iPhone, would become dominant, noting that the Google OS is likely to win the race similarly to the way that Windows ultimately dominated the PC world. Woz stressed that the iPhone, “Has very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems. In terms of quality, the iPhone is leading.” However, he then conceded that, ‘Android phones have more features,’ and offer more choice for more people. Eventually, he thinks that Android quality, consistency, and user satisfaction will match iOS.”

China Now Has the Fastest Supercomputer!

Whoa! Who would have thought this?

China Officially Overtakes U.S. in Supercomputer Performance

“It’s been rumored, but now it’s official. The Chinese Tianhe-1A system at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin has achieved a performance level of 2.57 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second). This puts it in the number one spot on the 36th edition of the TOP500’s world’s most powerful supercomputer list, the organization said Sunday.

As a result, the prior winner on the list—the Cray XT5 ‘Jaguar’ system at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee—is now ranked in second place, with a score of 1.75 petaflop/s.

Jaguar was expected to lose the top spot in the latest survey, ever since news first leaked in late October that the Tianhe-1A was testing considerably faster. TOP500 benchmarks each supercomputer with Linpack, the organization’s benchmark application.

The next three spots in the TOP500 are held by Nebulae, a Chinese system in Shenzhen rated at 1.27 petaflop/s; Tsubame 2.0, a system at the Tokyo Institute of Technology that scores 1.19 petaflop/s; and Hopper, a Cray XE6 system at DOE’s National Research Energy Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center in California, which hits 1.05 petaflop/s.

Interestingly, the two Chinese systems and Tsubame 2.0 are all using Nvidia GPUs to accelerate computation. In fact, 28 systems overall on the TOP500 uses GPUs as accelerators; 16 employ the Cell processor, 10 use Nvidia chips, and two use AMD Radeons chips.”

The “Go Forth and Be Geeky” Edition of Dr. Bill Netcast #164

Dr. Bill Netcast – 164 – (11/13/10)

Techpodcasts.com, Mozilla releases Beta 7 of Firefox 4, Red Hat announces Red Hat Linux 6, RIM’s Playbook, Facebook builds a data center in NC, Geek Software of the Week: Thinstation, Will Facebook challenge Gmail? Go forth and be geeky!

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

Techpodcasts.com

Thinstation


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Will Facebook “Project Titan” Challenge Gmail?

Would you trust Facebook as your email provider? Hummmm… I don’t know that I would… they don’t exactly have a rep for security!

Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday

“Back in February we wrote about Facebook’s secret Project Titan — a web-based email client that we hear is unofficially referred to internally as its ‘Gmail killer.’ Now we’ve heard from sources that this is indeed what’s coming on Monday during Facebook’s special event, alongside personal @facebook.com email addresses for users.

This isn’t a big surprise — the event invites Facebook sent out hinted strongly that the news would have something to do with its Inbox, sparking plenty of speculation that the event could be related to Titan. Our understanding is that this is more than just a UI refresh for Facebook’s existing messaging service with POP access tacked on. Rather, Facebook is building a full-fledged webmail client, and while it may only be in early stages come its launch Monday, there’s a huge amount of potential here.”

Geek Software of the Week: Thinstation!

ThinstationSo, you have old PCs sitting around, to old, too tired, and too under-powered to do anything useful with? Is that your problem, bub? Well, now you have something you can do with them! Especially if you have an Enterprise setup with VMware View and have a need for terminals!

Thinstation is a highly specialized Linux distro that turns old computers into terminals! You can boot from a CD version, or, you can install it on the PC hard drive, but either way, you will have a great, free, client for your VMware (and many other clients) system!

Thinstation Web Site

“Thinstation is a basic and small, yet very powerful, Open Source ‘thin client’ operating system supporting all major connectivity protocols: Citrix ICA, NoMachine NX, 2X ThinClient, Microsoft Windows terminal services (RDP, via RDesktop), VMWare View Open client, Cendio ThinLinc, Tarantella, X, telnet, tn5250, VMS terminal and SSH (No special configuration of the application servers is needed to use Thinstation).

Thinstation is mainly intended for schoolroom, office, company or department use, but can be used at home (eg. for a silent PC in the bedroom that ‘runs’ XP on your workstation in the back room).

Whilst Thinstation is based on Linux, users may actually never see Linux at all. If you decide to connect directly to a Microsoft Windows, Citrix or Unix server, the user will feel that they are running directly on the server. But, you can also have a local Desktop interface (with a local Browser & other tools).

Thinstation supports a Microsoft Windows-only environment and REQUIRES NO UNIX/Linux KNOWLEDGE.

Thinstation runs on ordinary PC hardware (x86). You may either reuse older computers or save a lot of time on workstation administration. Or both! An old Pentium 100 MHz with 32 MB RAM or better can be a perfectly useful workstation. And you don’t need a hard disk – you can boot off the network and even have a silent workstation. Workstation devices (floppy/HD/CD/USB) and printers (LPT/USB) are supported.

Thinstation can be booted from network (e.g. diskless) using Etherboot/PXE or from a local floppy/CD/HD/flash-disk, and Prebuilt images and a Live CD are available. The thin client configuration can be local or centralized to simplify management.”

Facebook Building a New Data Center in NC!

Facebook Datacenter.pngSo, Facebook has “friended” NC! My home state is jazzed that Facebook will be building a new $450 Million Dollar data center. Dewd! That’s a lot of geekiness!

Facebook ‘Friends’ North Carolina With Data Center

“North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue on Thursday said that Facebook plans to build a $450 million data center near Forest City in Rutherford County, the second data facility that the company will own. Our Judges Selected Some of The Most Groundbreaking Technology at Interop 2008, Including Overall Best of Show ‘We are proud that Facebook chose to make North Carolina a ‘friend,” said Gov. Perdue in a statement. ‘The feeling is certainly mutual. You can’t pick up a newspaper, read a magazine or flip on the television without hearing more great news about our state. The investment and jobs at the data center will be a boon to that region of the state, and will help confirm North Carolina’s distinction as a global business destination.’ The project is expected to take 18 months to build and to create over 250 construction and mechanical jobs, according to the Office of Gov. Perdue. The completed data center is expected to employ between 35 and 45 full-time and contract workers. Future expansion will also be a possibility.”

RIM Playbook Will Be Under $500

RIM PlaybookWill it be “the iPad for business?” Or, will users just say that they want iPads? We’ll see! Though, $500.00 is easier to get approved than $800.00.

RIM Climbs to Highest Since June on Plan for Tablet Under $500

“Research In Motion Ltd. climbed to the highest level since June after saying it will sell the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer for less than $500, suggesting it may try to undercut Apple Inc.’s iPad. ‘The product will be very competitively priced,’ co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie said in an interview in Seoul today, without being more specific than saying it will be ‘under’ $500. RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, will start selling the PlayBook in North America in the first quarter and expand into global markets in the second quarter, he said. The iPad starts at $499 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage and Wi-Fi wireless technology. The price rises to $829 for a version with more storage that can connect directly to cellular-phone networks.”

Red Hat Announces RHEL 6.0

So, another full version number jump! Not those small “dot” releases! The BIG one! Sounds good…. but I will wait a bit for good ol’ CentOS!

Red Hat announces Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

“Red Hat announced today, November 10th, that long anticipated release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.

The announcement itself was anti-climatic. Everyone in Linux circles knew that RHEL 6 was coming. What I did find interesting–as customer after customer and partner after partner said how wonderful RHEL was and Red Hat Red Hat EVP Paul Cormier showed how the server operating system market has become a battle between RHEL and Windows-was how utterly mainstream Linux has become.

Solaris is done. The other versions of Unix now live in niches. The other Linux distributions, such as Novell’s SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) and feisty newcomers such as Ubuntu are fighting it out for second place.

Linux is no longer a revolution. It is no longer the outsider wanting into the business market. Linux, in particular, RHEL, is at business’ heart. As Cormier said, “It’s no longer about who has the newest kernel, our customers are beyond that.”

Exactly. I see Red Hat’s announcement as a graduation ceremony. Yes, the technology is important, but what’s even more important now is Red Hat, the business, Red Hat, the brand.

As for RHEL 6 itself, yes there are many advances. What I see as the big change here is that Red Hat is pushing RHEL not just as the standalone server operating system we’ve known it as for years, but as the business operating system for both virtualization and the cloud.”

Mozilla Releases Beta 7 of Firefox 4

And… they claim it is MUCH faster than before… which is a good thing, because as much as I love Firefox, I haqve switched to Chrome because it is so light and fast! Hopefully Firefox will regain some of its mojo!

Mozilla releases beta 7 of Firefox 4, claims 3-5x performance boost

“Mozilla Wednesday released a significant update to the beta of its Firefox 4 browser. The update adds a new JavaScript JIT compiler, going by the name of JägerMonkey, and improves the browser’s support for hardware acceleration, OpenType fonts, and WebGL 3D graphics (the technology used to create an HTML5 version of Quake II back in April.) Additionally, the latest beta includes a stable add-ons API, so developers can finally update their add-ons to Firefox 4. Of course, the first thing Mozilla is touting about this version of the browser is the performance boost it gets from the new JägerMonkey JavaScript compiler.”

The “Amalgam of Stuff Edition” of the Dr. Bill Netcast #163

Dr. Bill Netcast – 163 – (11/07/10)

Techpodcasts news, older employees and social networking, Blekko, print a car? Internet Time Travelers, Geek Software and Website of the Week! Geek Project: Google Maps for fun!

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

Techpodcasts.com

AVS4You.com


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