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Data center utilization – 15% of 11.8 million is still a big number
Treehugger had a brilliant piece a few weeks about the statistics on computers and data centers.
The headline figure is amazing - 11.8 million servers in the USA in 2007. The disturbing one is that most of those machines run at 15% capacity or less, still idling and consuming power. Even more disturbing is that half of the power used to power data centers is required just to remove the heat they generate.
Sciene 2.0 and rights protection
I was reading in Scientific American about how modern scientists and researchers are beginning to use web technologies, including blogs, wikis and social networks.
So-called Science 2.0 is trying to take advantage of the same technology used by other groups to provide tools for sharing knowledge, research notes and experience.
Power to N Ratio
We're just about to get a new car, and, as a car fanatic, one of the first things you learn is that the power to weight ratio is important if what you want is speed.
Open and closed Wi-Fi
I've been traveling around for the last few months all over the place and finding the availability of Wifi interesting.
I'm still amazed that I can get Wifi for free on the train down to London, even on a standard ticket, but strangely cannot get it for free in the first class lounge at Heathrow airport, or indeed, many other airports. Those in the US seem to offer it more readily, but even there, I had no access to free Wifi at SFO, but did in Orlando.
Automatic example generator
I wonder whether there is a market for creating an automated example generator for different projects.
I’m just doing a piece on XML schemas and would love to be able to create a ready to run sample of SOAP and WSDL XML files without having to actually create the example by hand. Just a quick ‘give me this function, these arguments’ and have it generate it.
Years I go I thought about this for things like contacts and book projects.
More MySQL UC 08 Videos
Hopefully you can’t get enough of the UC08 videos (and thanks to Sheeri for the link with the full Jonathan keynote video), so Zack has managed to get some most posted.
This morning, we learned what it meant to be a pirate in terms of patents, copyright and now politics with the Pirate Party. Don’t let the scary name put you off – these guys are about making all of us consumers (of software, video, audio, books, etc.) more in control of information. Please support these guys by visiting Piratpartiet.se.
Next we had the Scalability Panel with representatives from Facebook, Fotolog, Sun, YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia talking about the problems (and some of the solutions) they have taken to approach the bane of any web company.
One option for scalability of course is just not to cover the problem yourself. Skip the issues of server rooms and use Amazon’s various services (EC2, S3, etc). If you need convincing, try Werner Vogels’ talk.
Yesterday, in a short but sweet visit to the podium, Rich Green talked about MySQL and Sun and it will all work. If you have concerns about the integration, this is a good place to get the situation from the guy who will make sure it doesn’t go wrong. And of course Rich will answer to Jonathan.
Marten talked about the significance of Storage engines and the significance of your data.
For a full list, try Zack’s profile page.
MySQL UC 08 Keynote Videos
I’m pleased to say that I was able to see these in the flesh, but if you aren’t lucky enough to be here (or just want to watch them again), Zack has posted up videos on YouTube of the opening keynote presentations:
- MySQL Conference Keynote 2008 – Marten Mickos
- MySQL Conference Keynote 2008 – Jonathan Schwartz
- MySQL Conference Keynote 2008 – Werner Vogels
Sadly these are only snippets, but if you like what you see, make sure to book your place for next year’s conference early!
Asterisk in trouble
Here's a rather worrying post about whether Asterisk will be the next dinosaur.
It all boils down to changes within the Asterisk code which are breaking existing apps and installations, and breaking the distributions and applications based on the Asterisk code base.
The future needs programmers
Bill Thompson at the BBC asks the question Who will write tomorrow's code?, and it's a similar question to the one I've asked before now.
How do we get kids interested in programming computers, as opposed to just using them?