SouthPark - Internet - Very Funny!

Innovation in IT...Are We Getting A Clue???

Great article on innovation in IT in the Information Week Blogs.  The article summarizes a survey by Accenture that breaks down and describes the barriers and enablers to innovation within IT.   Please note: That nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents to the survey said that their organization’s business strategy is either totally or largely dependent on innovation.  So, innovation is now one of the largest elements in a utilized in building, deploying and aligning strategically with other business disciplines with any organization.  Using innovation to increase IT's visibility and value within an organization is just plain smart. 

Read on and innovate!

XP Will Be With Us A Little Longer

So after a great deal of complaining to Microsoft by numerous parties...they have acquiesced, and will continue to sell XP for five more months.  That means manufacturers can continue selling PCs with all flavors of Windows XP preloaded until June 30, 2007.  This is a welcome change and will allow many people including myself to continue to use XP, as numerous people have found Vista more difficult and less useful to use.  I have noted that XP continues to be the OS of choice for many corporate customers, as it is less cumbersome than Vista, and still remains a strong alternative to Vista for road warriors.  We can only hope that Microsoft will work harder to make Vista easier before it finally closes the door on the faithful and respected XP.

A Structured Approach To Implementing An ITIL Library

Many organizations often get excited about ITIL and begin implementing it into their organizations without understanding the effects of doing it on their service capabilities.  Having a plan and understanding the ramifications of implementing the plan are a crucial first step.  Shortly after approving the plan and starting the move to ITIL, you will be asked to create a ITIL Infrastructure Library.   This can be a complex undertaking and the article in CIO Magazine does a great job laying nine steps to take when beginning this process.  Be sure and pay attention to their point on determining your biggest opportunity for value...this is fundamental to keeping momentum during ITIL Library implementation.  ITIL can really improve your service management, but only if approached and implemented successfully.

IPv6 And The Coming Storm

With a government deadline for IPv6 looming many monitoring, management and security software vendors are trying to move quickly to ensure they will have IPv6 support in their products.  This article from Network World dives deep into the current state of management platforms and their support for IPv6.

New Database Startup Has Big Players and High Hopes

A new startup leads by industry bigwigs called Vertica has developed a new grid-enabled, column-oriented relational database management system (RDBMS) that runs on industry-standard, Linux-based hardware. According to their site "The Vertica Database® provides extremely fast ad hoc SQL query performance, even for very large databases, making it well suited for:

• Data warehousing
• Data marts
• Clickstream analysis
• Fraud detection
• Call detail analysis
• Consumer customer analytics
• Business intelligence
• Other query-intensive applications

The Vertica Database is still in beta testing."  There are a lot of big bets being placed on this venture and should be very interesting.

11.38 petabits per second? Really?

It is true...according to an article on CNET online titled "Inside the Lucasfilm data center", their datacenter has the total capacity of 11.38 petabits per second.  Of course this is theoritical...but impressive none the less.  In the story "Kevin Clark, Lucasfilm's director of IT operations, said, the data center "far exceeds" the computing power of any other production house in the world."  It is a great article with views inside the data center...so get your computing envy on.

MYSQL Offers New Storage Engine Falcon

Although its an Alpha release MYSQL's new storage engine called Falcon will provide a very good alternative for large Web 2.0 applications running on web farms. The article in InfoWorld points out that "the storage engine is geared for high-performance environments while still supporting transactional and logging requirements, according to MySQL."

What DoesThe Democrats' Win Mean For The Tech Industry?

Great article on CNET regarding the effect the Democrats' win will have for the tech industry.  For instance a GOP committee recently failed to approve rules that all Internet traffic be treated the same no matter what its "source" or "destination" might be.  This is an important item for the tech industry and the Democrats should lean towards net neutrality...very important.

The Patent Troll is Back!

The patent trolls over at NTP are back and after more money from another legitimate company Palm.  Once again they are using broad patents that were never meant to provide the IP protection they are claiming.  In fact two of their other patents have been rejected in preliminary findings by US Patent and Trademark office.  It is now in the appeals process. 

NTP's only business is to wrongly squeeze money out of legitimate companies, they do not provide any service or product.  They represent all that is wrong with our patent system and hopefully someone will do something soon. 

Quantum attacks worry computer scientists

Quantum computer use state to determine connectivity intervals thereby minimizing the opportunities for threats to occur.  Read about it in this story from Security Focus.  Although quantum computers are still in thier infancy..they possibilities are endless.  These computers have the potential to help us meet some of mankinds greatest technology challenges in medicine, science and business.  So security for these systems will be a high priority.

Linux Kernel Developers Reject GPLv3

In their posting "The Dangers and Problems with GPLv3", 29 Linux Kernel Developers have rejected the newly proposed GPLv3 licensing.  They cite three main issues and have listed numerous others.  They do not think it would benefit those that license their software via the GPL licensing scheme.  There points seem to be valid and although GPLv2 has some issues it is still better than the new v3 proposition.  We need to tread lightly on a licensing scheme v2 that has done so much for the Open Source community.  Any changes should be solely out of neccessity or by broad support for a change by the community itself.

Space Craft Crashes and Floating Point Numbers

Great article on the issue of rounding floating point numbers.  In this article on Reg developer the author Dan Clarke discusses the misues of floating point numbers in current development practices.  He points out that with space craft crashing, inconsistent information on bank statements and pensioners being short changed (he provides validation for these example) that the practice of rounding floating point numbers can have disasterous results.  So take note all you developers using floating point numbers...and leave my bank statement alone.

Mena Trott of Six Apart's View On The Future of Blogging - Business Week

Interesting article in Business Week discussing with Mena Trott of Six Apart the future of blogging and the tools use to do it.  I really enjoyed "The Personal Voice" comment as you can gebin to see the true impact blogging is having on society.  News and the way you view news is changin and evolving...faster...and faster.

Down With The Patent Trolls At NTP

CNET.com is reporting that the Judge in the on-going patent battle between RIM and NTP over Blackberry devices and their use is taking both parties arguments under advisement and will render rulings on both damages and the requested injunction soon.  Hopefully the judge will do the right thing and rule in favor of RIM as the PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) continues to issue "Final Rejections" against the errant patents previously issued to NTP.  These patents were pivotal in the jury awarding NTP damges from RIM in the first place.   

Down with NTP...

Down with the d*&% patent trolls!

Free the Blackberry...