Internets of Interest:28 Dec 10

Collection of useful, relevant or inane places on the the Internets for 28 Dec 10:

• The Curious Case Of the MBO Cloud | Rational Survivability –
  

  They rush out, buy 10 off-the-shelf white-label commodity multi-CPU/multi-core servers, acquire a plain vanilla NAS or low-end SAN storage appliance, sprinkle on some Xen or KVM, load on some unremarkable random set of open source software packages to test with a tidy web front-end and call it “cloud.” No provisioning, no orchestration, no self-service portals, no chargeback, no security, no real scale, no operational re-alignment, no core applications…

  Beaker is so far ahead of the market on Cloud Security it's hard to understand his point of view. He has a good point though, and Cloud Computing will ultimately fail because of poor management – either by operators or customers. The result remains the same.

• HP Blogs – Ten Server Technologies for 2011 – The HP Blog Hub – Daniel Bowers from HP (who can't sing ABBA songs at ALL) puts out a good list of server technologies for the coming year. Daniel knows what's happening here and you should check out what he is saying. Note: Prediction No 5 on FCoTR, I think he it right.
• What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation  [Support] – Cisco Systems –
  

  Cisco IOS Release 15.1(1)S, Cisco IOS Release 15.1(3)T, and Cisco IOS XE Release 3.2S
  Cisco Nexus 7000 Series

  Ho Hum.

• The parable of the the PDA: predicting the smartphone’s future | asymco –
  

  The problem is that users cannot calculate option value in their minds when faced with a market research questionnaire. How can they envision all the ways they would use a new product they’ve never used before? How can they “get it” without observing it in use or spending time thinking of “how they would use it” or asking someone who tried it? In a nutshell, users are willing to pay for option value but can’t envision or quantify this value without observing a finished, polished product in use.

  I've made this point elsewhere. You don't ask customers want they want because they do not know what's impossible, or even possible. Given a chance people will have more of what they already have. That's how we got MS Windows……..

• Networks and Complexity. – Love this six page presentation on complexity from Geoff Huston. IP is simple, but carriers have made it complex – and makes me wonder are carriers making it too complex.
• Google’s AROUND Operator for Proximity Search –
  

  Google has an undocumented operator called "AROUND" for finding web pages that include words or phrases which are near to each other.

  Useful for searching for blog posts that you can't quite remember.

• Joshua Kors: Why I’m Returning My iMac – This guy has so little knowledge of computers you wonder how he is a journalist. He tried to install Windows software, didn't understand default settings, or much at all and blames the computer and not himself.

  A tradesman should know their tools, how they work and how to maintain them. The level is oblivious and arrogant ignorance here makes me wonder if this guy can breathe and walk at the same time. No wonder computer gets dumber (like the iPad) all the time.