I've been criticized on my post yesterday (HP head does the decent thing) for not calling what has happened at HP 'incompetence'.

James Earl, who commented this fact, has some other strong opinions on what should have happened, and I don't in any way disagree with him.

Incompetence is not the right word though; Incompetence implies that HP don't have the skills to do the job properly.

What the chairwoman did here was not incompetent, it was malicious, AFAIK illegal, and well executed, if , as we'll all agree, very badly thought out. What the board did when they found out was not incompetent either, it was instead the comparatively typical response for a group of people who's responsibility is to the shareholders and the company. As I mentioned yesterday, those shareholders hold a significant amount of sway in any company.

After my post on the Sun T1000 and the subsequent podcast interview, I noticed this comment on the T1000 post from David Halko:

Please run some tests and take the T1 to the breaking point... total number of requests, total number of failures, latency... and compare it to something else.

This is, of course, exactly what I'm doing!

I've developed a simple quite of functionality that I'll be testing. I have a comparison against Sun's own X2100 (based on the AMD) using a combination of static and dynamic elements. From that, I'll be able to extract all of the above and show the detail, as well as some graphs, on that output.

After my post on the Sun T1000 and the subsequent podcast interview, I noticed this comment on the T1000 post from David Halko:

Please run some tests and take the T1 to the breaking point... total number of requests, total number of failures, latency... and compare it to something else.

This is, of course, exactly what I'm doing!

I've developed a simple quite of functionality that I'll be testing. I have a comparison against Sun's own X2100 (based on the AMD) using a combination of static and dynamic elements. From that, I'll be able to extract all of the above and show the detail, as well as some graphs, on that output.

In my very first post here at Computerworld I comment on the use of RSS feeds as an administration technique (RSS as an administration tool).

It caused quite a stir at the time amongst fellow bloggers at CW and how useful and practical that was. I've finally been able to put that into more detail through a tutorial at IBM's developerWorks site. Since I posited the thought here first, I thought I should let the readers here know about it too.

You can get some summary information on the tutorial here, or jump straight to the tutorial: Use alternative methods to manage and monitor your UNIX servers.

In my very first post here at Computerworld I comment on the use of RSS feeds as an administration technique (RSS as an administration tool).

It caused quite a stir at the time amongst fellow bloggers at CW and how useful and practical that was. I've finally been able to put that into more detail through a tutorial at IBM's developerWorks site. Since I posited the thought here first, I thought I should let the readers here know about it too.

You can get some summary information on the tutorial here, or jump straight to the tutorial: Use alternative methods to manage and monitor your UNIX servers.

You don't have to read my blogs for long to know that I'm really keen on virtualization, so I was fascinated by this story on potential pitfalls: Experts Warn of Virtualization.

I say fascinated not because I think it's wrong - I think it's completely right. Virtualization has lots of benefits - better hardware utilization is the main one, lower running costs is another, and all this is usually coupled with easier and more centralized management - but it isn't a cure all for all processes and environments, and if done badly, creates more problems than it solves.

You don't have to read my blogs for long to know that I'm really keen on virtualization, so I was fascinated by this story on potential pitfalls: Experts Warn of Virtualization.

I say fascinated not because I think it's wrong - I think it's completely right. Virtualization has lots of benefits - better hardware utilization is the main one, lower running costs is another, and all this is usually coupled with easier and more centralized management - but it isn't a cure all for all processes and environments, and if done badly, creates more problems than it solves.

As reported here by the BBC, and a myriad other places, Patricia Dunn has resigned as Chairman (Chairwoman?) of HP, effective from January 2007.

She is not going immediately, and only stepping down from the top position; she will remain at HP.

The whole situation is bad for HP, and bad press for corporations and directors of many companies, because it gives the impression that others would be willing to do the same in similar circumstances.

The delay to me seems strange, although it seems to be a common practice in companies (and politics) that when something goes wrong, you stick it out and hope you can carry on as if nothing happened. It used to be that once discovered, the person would resign and leave immediately.

Longer term, it will be interesting to see how this affects HP. It might not change what people buy their machines, but it will unnerve investors and that will affect HP's position in the marketplace, which will undoubtedly have a longer lasting effect on how HP applies itself in the years to come.

See more coverage:

As reported here by the BBC, and a myriad other places, Patricia Dunn has resigned as Chairman (Chairwoman?) of HP, effective from January 2007.

She is not going immediately, and only stepping down from the top position; she will remain at HP.

The whole situation is bad for HP, and bad press for corporations and directors of many companies, because it gives the impression that others would be willing to do the same in similar circumstances.

The delay to me seems strange, although it seems to be a common practice in companies (and politics) that when something goes wrong, you stick it out and hope you can carry on as if nothing happened. It used to be that once discovered, the person would resign and leave immediately.

Longer term, it will be interesting to see how this affects HP. It might not change what people buy their machines, but it will unnerve investors and that will affect HP's position in the marketplace, which will undoubtedly have a longer lasting effect on how HP applies itself in the years to come.

See more coverage:

I recently came across Jungle Disk.

They use the Amazon S3 storage system to provide you with a secure way to store files over the Internet, using Amazon for the storage and their software as the interface between your machine and Amazon. Primarily this is practical for use in a backup situation, and there are a number of benefits to this approach; for one, your backup is kept securely off site, and the data is encrypted too.

The cost is low too - 15 cents/Gigabyte, which compares favourably to similar services, like GoDaddy and Apple's iTools/Mac.com service. Ironically for the latter, because Jungle Disk appears as a local disk, you can use the Mac Backup application to store your files on the remote Amazon system.