Off-the-shelf servers spar with million-dollar storage arrays

Commoditization of storage arrays by use of off the shelf servers is coming to town.The Register has the story about VMworld 2011 where in a hands on lab three contenders were competing with their storage arrays. Well known vendors EMC and NetApp against Nexenta who build a storage array based on common of the shelf server parts for a fraction of the costs. EMC and NetApp are of course not happy with it but the message is clear: adapt or die.

Intel preps 15-Watt 'Sandy Bridge' for micro servers

Unlike AMD Intel has deep pockets for R&D. The Register reports that Intel developed a new Sandy Bridge variant with a low 15W TDP especially for microservers which are suitable for dedicated hosting and Web infrastructure workloads. Those still growing niche amount for 10% of the server market and is the target of some ARM-based servermakers like Calxeda. Intel is not giving up without a fight and those ARM-server will have to be decent priced and have better cycles/per watt performance to stay ahead of Intel. Fair competition is fine, only problem is Intel did not really like [b]fair[/b] competition in the past.

AMD snags Guinness World Record for clockiest chip

In not dead yet The Register reports the worldrecord fastest chip for AMD. They clocked a prerelease eight-core AMD FX desktop processor to 8.429GHz which is a amazing speed of course. But they can not beat Intel's current line of Core i processors and their marketshare is too little and they earn too little to continue financing the R&D effort to beat Intel. Collaboration with ARM would be a far better option especially to develope energy saving chips but it is not likely to happen.

9/11: The day we lost our privacy and power

The Register has a topic about the changed zeitgeist after 9/11 and the immense grow of the military industrial complex. The start of a era where our privacy has been shattered to dust and the Fourth World War started without being seen other then invasive measures on airfields and planes. That is to say the topic shows some buildings which are supposed to be part of the new infrastructure of the Global War On Terror. Why supposed to be? Because it is quite possible that even this article has some misinformation to misguide the "bad" guys.

How to surf T-Mobile without a data plan

ExtremeTech has a report about Smozzy an app for android phones which enables websurfing over sms/mms. Of course it is slow and Smozzy is based on a cheap VPS so it will not be able to service hundreds of phones. And it is only usefull for people with a unlimited sms/mms plan like T-Mobile USA. All in all it is a nice hack which also shows that pricing of sms/mms is highly overpriced comparing it to other datatraffic by gprs/3G. It is also reminds me to the use of 16 Kb D-channel from a ISDN connection which is capable of X25 datapacket switching but only meant to be used for signaling. If you were lucky you could use it between two locations as a low permanent datachannel for free. Most of the time they killed it after discovery with the message that they would restore it after paying an additional monthly fee.

Wikileaked cable: AFACT was MPAA’s cat’s-paw

If you ever asked yourself how far the tentacles of the American movie industry reaches you find an answer in a report from The Register. They mentions a Wikileaks cable which confirms that it was the MPAA and only in name AFACT who is sueing Australian provider Iinet about copyright infringments by their customers. Their objectives are known too they want a judgement which would be usable in all Commonwealth countries. To be continued because this case is not over yet.

Security breach at kernel.org

The Linux Kernel Archives reports a security breach in their kernel.org servers which have endured a period of about 14 days. Damage seem to be limited but are investigated further at the moment. It is quite disturbing that such a important website has been hacked so easily but it is once again a reminder of the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt make backups!