Archive for January, 2007
Lucas’ network infrastructure trumps world
Given the cult-film status of 1971′s THX 1138 in the George Lucas universe, it should come as little surprise that the total capacity of Lucasfilm’s giant data center is 11.38 petabits per second.
Granted, that number–which represents the value one would get by adding up the bandwidth capacity of all the company’s 1 gigabit per second desktop machines and its 10-gbps backbone–is purely theoretical. But in an environment like Lucasfilm, which is celebrating four Oscar nominations this week, and where self-referential history is a big parlor game, numbers like that are nothing to be messed with.
The 10-gbps backbone is the core of the data center’s network. That rate is faster than the prevailing industry standard of around 1 gbps for most servers.
“They’re hesitant to change that capacity,” Kevin Clark, Lucasfilm’s director of IT operations, said of the total theoretical bandwidth number.
Take a video tour of this badass datacenter here!
Goodbye-Microsoft.com
Debian hacker Robert Millan has just announced the availability of a Debian-Installer Loader for win32. The program, inspired by Ubuntu’s similar project, features 64-bit CPU auto-detection, download of linux/initrd netboot images, and chainloading into Debian-Installer via grub4dos. The frontend site goodbye-microsoft.com has been set up for advocacy purposes.
Even tho we know MS will continue to carry the lion’s share of the OS market for some time, it’s comforting to know that those people who know nothing else but Winblows have options, if they so choose.
That’s the real challenge: complacency leads to, well, here’s a famous quote of Thomas Edison’s:
We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.
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The Unfilmables: A List of the Hardest Novels to Film
With the release of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, an adaptation of a novel once considered impossible to film, what better time to look into the process of adaptation. Most movies these days are based on literary sources. Which is ironic, considering the increasing lack of interest in books these days as opposed to the spoon-fed thoughts offered by Hollywood.
While many novels can be almost directly translated to screen, especially pre-20th century novels such as Jane Austen’s gossip columns, more recent novels can prove difficult.
[more]
No third party crap [i mean apps]
![thinfilms jobs iphone No third party crap [i mean apps]](http://waxieus.net/wp-content/img/jobs_iphone.jpg)
via [slashdot]
In an interview with the New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms reports that the recently-announced iPhone will not allow third party applications to be installed. According to Jobs, “These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them.”
In a similar vein, Jobs said in an MSNBC article that, “Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”
As someone who’s supported devices on multiple platforms for years always battling often baffling conflicts induced by the interaction of third party apps with otherwise reliable systems, i must say i can see his point, which is why my own, private systems have none of these types of software installed on them.
the question is : will the average bear be detracted by this and thus affect the total number of sales?
Jobs is confident in acquiring 1% of the total cellular market upon release of the iPhone [approximately 10 million phones per year]
Time surely will tell.
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Shiny, pretty…
It looks kick ass. It couldn’t have better hype. At less than $600 not too bad for a phone/media player with 8GB on board.
Hurry, June. We all want to play with Apple’s latest wow device.
Read more about it here if you likey.
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what does this mean?
i took this over the weekend just walking around on an afternoon stroll.
if anyone knows what this means, would you please fill me in?
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It’s been REAL he says…
our mentors in the lost art of pumpkin-carving, Dave n Sarah, have left their j-o-bs to travel around the world in 365 days.
yep, sucks to be them ; )
Dave left the following words of wisdom for his colleagues at RealNetworks after 7 1/2 years working down on Elliott [taken from his blog, davethegrinch.net]:
* I’ve had more managers than offices
* I’ve had a lot of offices
* I started as an immigrant, became a resident and left a citizen
* I’m surprised I wasn’t fired
* Flexible work schedules make flexible employees
* Free pepsi and coke is not an effective tool to boost employee morale
* Beer apparently is
* Life balance is not defined by how many hours one spends in meetings versus the hours one spends in their office
* Why bother holding a meeting when the decision has already been made – send a memo or something
* Becoming a VP doesn’t automatically make you Bill Gates
* I’m surprised how many people love taco salads
* The quality of software engineering is directly proportional to the quality of the software engineers’ management.
* Halloween should be a national holiday
* August R’n’R is a good idea only if you plan to not achieve anything in August
* For a company on the bleeding edge of the digital information revolution, submitting paper forms to report vacation seems kind of quaint
* Rebranding websites and players for “partners†is never a good or profitable idea
* It’s just entertainment on the internet, nobody is going to die if it doesn’t launch on time
* Deadlines should only be decided upon when at least one person knows what should be delivered on that deadline
* There are worse places to work than RN however complacency is not an excuse to stay
***
cheers you two – safe journey.
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A car for your favorite soak
(via the Associated Press) — Toyota Motor Corp. is developing a fail-safe system for cars that detects drunken drivers and automatically shuts the vehicle down if sensors pick up signs of excessive alcohol consumption.
Cars fitted with the detection system will not start if sweat sensors in the driving wheel detect high levels of alcohol in the driver’s bloodstream, according to a report carried by the mass-circulation daily, Asahi Shimbun.
The system could also kick in if the sensors detect abnormal steering, or if a special camera shows that the driver’s pupils are not in focus. The car is then slowed to a halt, the report said.
The world’s No. 2 automaker hopes to fit cars with the system by the end of 2009, according to the report.
See what happens when people can’t be responsible for themselves? Government and corporations do it for us! yippeee!!!
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