Solaris/SPARC is still going strong in large companies. One of the greatest advantages it has is that Oracle creates and supports the operating system, and Oracle creates and supports the hardware. (If you're running an Oracle database or some other piece of software, then that's an additional component that they create and support.) What this means is that if I'm having a problem, mundane or esoteric, I can go to one vendor and say, "Fix it." There isn't any bickering about what company's problem it is, and who manufactured my RAM, or any other the other silliness that crops up in vendor support. Large companies value this (as do us sysadmins). That also means they can do some very cool software tricks (which I'll mention a few here below).

The decreasing unit shipments is just as much a sign of virtualization as anything. Right now, I'm looking at an older T5240, with two eight-core CPUs which presents itself as having 128 virtual CPUs (execution engines or thread engines), and 64gb of RAM. This is by no means the biggest box on the floor. We carve these up into smaller systems using either Solaris Zones, or LDOMs. That's two different methods of virtualization with two different goals.

I did something great with an LDOM last week. I took a virtual server that was on the box and migrated the entire operating system and all the applications over to another LDOM... WHILE IT WAS STILL RUNNING. Aside from a quick (1 second) pause, the applications on the server had no idea that it just migrated to another piece of hardware while it continued to run. Slick! The original server had a failing DIMM. No worries, though even aside from ECC, the operating system automatically mapped out which parts of the DIMM were defective and retired the pages of memory so that they weren't constantly being exercised. Linux does all that... right? No?

Someone else, above, said, "I don't think you can have a zfs system fail and move it to different hardware like you can with vmware...". Nevermind that we can migrate a running operating system and application to another piece of hardware and keep it running. Yes, of course if you have a hardware fault, you can bring it back up on another machine. The virtualization with Solaris is quite capable.

In the environment of a large company where we're competing against Linux on the low-cost end of things, Solaris/SPARC is not only holding its own, but actually beating our Linux cloud counterparts in the costs of a virtualized OS/hardware. (I should ask my boss if we can publish a paper on this, because it is rather impressive.)

On the high end of things, we completely dominate. We generally use a T5-4 for our internal cloud (which really isn't the biggest Oracle server out there). It has 64 cores, presenting 512 execution threads to the scheduler. RAM goes up to 2TB. If someone starts out on a tiny box with only one CPU and 4gb of RAM, we can scale them all the way up to the top by increasing their virtualization settings. No migrating to different or unusual hardware. If an application team can't scale their code horizontally (hey, it happens), they can go way vertical in this configuration. We haven't had a need yet for an M6-32 (32tb of RAM, and 32 of the 12-core CPUs (3072 execution threads or "virtual cpus"). We have Linux surrounded (on the low-cost side and the high-performance side) in a large enterprise environment, and that's why Solaris is still there.

Now, I'm not an Oracle salesperson. But if Slashdot ever did an AMA with an Oracle sales engineer, I think my fellow Linux admins would be particular impressed on how far ahead Oracle/SPARC is in a number of key areas.

Amazon recently announced it was getting into the advertisement business, and it beat out Google to acquire Twitch.

Pure speculation on my part, but I have to wonder if this is just Google's CEO trying to steal some of the spotlight away from Amazon?

Suddenly, Google is saying, "Oh yeah... delivery drones. We've been doing this for some time now." It smells like petty CEO bickering. (As cool as delivery drones are.)

Based on published information, we know that the NSA gets customer information by compelling companies to produce the records, or it taps the connections between their datacenters and it gets the data in transit). Apple didn't deny either -- neither one of those involve installing a backdoor or giving SERVER access.

I think you're on the right track. There really is nothing that Apple can say to convince foreign users that their data is safe.

Some additional nostalgia from 1997...

Escape from MicroSun (aka "Friday Afternoon") is a text adventure (written by a Sun Microsystems employee) where you play the part of a programmer for "MicroSun" and have to escape the office by 6pm for a date.

I was an original backer for the Ouya. The interface is a bit awkward, but worse, the software titles just aren't compelling. There doesn't seem to be a great reason to make an exclusive Ouya game, and anything you can find there you can get on your phone or another platform. Playing smartphone games on your TV just doesn't deliver any kind of wow factor. :(

Why is it that people name their product the very opposite of what it is? Is it supposed to serve as some sort of rebuttal? Safe for who? The guy going 60mph? Anyone around him when he loses power steering and brakes?

Technically possible, but I'm sure, not practical. Even more so when you consider that the ads can be embedded in the applications. By contrast, consider how practical it would be to install a custom ROM on a iPhone and remove all the ads?

The kinds of wireless networks the article was talking about were not WiFi (or fiber) technologies.

So, Google wanted their place that was free of government regulation to experiment and try new things out. It sounds like, in many ways, they have found it. They can get their feet wet and learn the ropes of wireless networks. Maybe in time, they'll come back to the US and play against the big boys.

“Computer science has a marketing problem." That's what Larry said. And his presentation was about marketing more than anything. He was trying to sell the world view that works great for his company, and he certainly put his sour grapes on the table.

He talks of "resistance to technological change", which is code for Google Glasses and the glasshole syndrome. He talks of how people should should be more relaxed with their medical records, which is code for Google Health. They had a clear plan how they were going to make money with Google Health (selling user data). The problem was that, on the user side, they had a solution that was in search of an actual need. But Google has made it clear that they're not going to learn that lesson.

You know, I kind of like his idea of a mirror universe where more avant-garde ideas can be tested out, in small scale, in the real-world. He wanted a Burning Man type of environment for new technology. Actually, Eureka (the town from the TV show of the same name) might have been a closer fit (although the reference would have been lesser-known, and is almost synonymous with disaster). Being able to try things out (on the small scale and a limited geography) and work out the problems there is great for allowing a company to iterate on a product without the marketing backlash for failures.

In theory, I'd love to live in that Eureka town. But only if it was about the product and about the science. The only thing Google Health did for me was to convince me that Google's products and services aren't about what they deliver (search, ubiquitous health records). They are about Google's real customers (advertisers, health care industry) and Google's real problem is finding a way to get everyone to jump on board so they can make money. That's what he is saying, in code, when he says "computer science has a marketing problem".

The other sites talk about Apple also pursuing a device with curved glass. I have to wonder if they've taken a page from the CST-01 design validation unit on KickStarter. Could they be pursuing an iDevice in the wrist bracer form factor? I'm looking at the pictures and I'm telling myself that Apple has got to be exploring some sort of electronic device in this form. If so, it is going to be significantly more complex than a watch.

Discontinued, but still available for $110. http://www.frys.com/product/6708525
Also, hello again Brien King. But you knew me under a different username.

I am very pleased to see some good case design. I really like having a case that is fun to look at. (The odd thing with non-computer types is if they see a really snazzy case, they assume you've got some sort of super computer under the hood!) This one is a little interesting, but I don't think it is $400 worth. Myself, I recently got a lot of bang for the buck modding some NZXT Phantom cases. They've already got a very nice sci-fi design and look like props from Mass Effect. They are $90 shipped at TigerDirect right now, which is tough to beat. Large as hell, too. I think the only thing I really didn't like about it is that some of the older NZXT Phantom cases have USB 2.0 built in. The newer one I picked up had 2.0 and 3.0 built into the case. But back on topic, PLEASE, encourage cool case makers. I just don't think this one is $400 cool.

Too bad I don't have mod points here. You hit quite a number of points dead-on.