Dell Warns of Malware on Small Number of PowerEdge Motherboards Computerworldreports that Dell is warning customers that a small amount of its PowerEdge R410 server motherboards may contain malware.
A post on a Dell support forum, "The potential issue involves a small number of PowerEdge server motherboards sent out through service dispatches that may contain malware. This malware code has been detected on the embedded server management firmware."
Japanese Researchers Create Baby Robot
Japanese researchers have created a robot that resembles a human child. The researchers hope the baby bot will lead to an intelligent robots that can live with humans. The baby bots, which can crawl and walk, are also being used to help scientists learn more about child development. At least it is not as creepy as Yotaro, the giant baby robot simulator. Take a look:
HP to Layoff 9,000 Employees as it Streamlines Data Centers
CNET reports that HP plans to layoff 9,000 employees as it streamlines its data centers. The human workers will be replaced by improve software and automation.
The company announced Tuesday that it plans to spend the money to invest in a series of commercial data centers that will offer enterprise customers a more integrated platform on which to run their businesses. The initiative will also consolidate HP's data centers, networks, and applications. But as a result of the increased streamlining and automation, HP expects to eliminate around 9,000 jobs, or about 3 percent of its work force, over the next few years. HP has approximately 304,000 employees worldwide, according to a Fast Facts page on its Web site.
An article on BNET says layoffs like the 9,000 at HP are part of the "brutal reality of cloud computing."
Unfortunately, that's the brutal reality of cloud computing. The savings that clients see comes from employees and vendors, as customers in aggregate buy less hardware and software and price competition on the service front races like a wind-swept forest fire.
As I've heard from one IT outsource firm after another, consolidation and utilization are the the future.
Timesays HP's layoffs will be spread out over the next 3 years.
Steve Jobs Discusses Flash at D8 Conference CNN reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs reiterated his disdain for Flash technology at the D8 conference. Jobs says Apple, which recently passed Microsoft in market capitalization, has limited resources, so they have to be careful which horses they decide to ride.
"Apple is a company that doesn't have the most resources of everybody in the world. The way we have succeeded is by choosing which horses to ride very carefully."
He said that in the drive to make truly great products as opposed to merely OK ones, sometimes you can't tackle absolutely everything; "we didn't start off to have a war with Flash. We just made a technical decision."
With Flash in particular, the Apple CEO portrayed the technology as having "had its day," and that since technology tends to go in cycles, "we look for tech that has a future and is headed up."
This arguments are pretty similar to the arguments Steve Jobs has made in the past. Adobe likely strongly disagrees with Jobs that Flash has "had its day." Major media/entertainment companies including Time Warner and NBC have decided to stick with Flash despite Steve Jobs' complaints.
Geocities was long enough ago that some Internet noobs may not even be familiar with it. Geocities was an early attempt at offering personal homepages for the masses. It wasn't successful and most of the Geocities websites were known for their immature look. Geocities pages tended to have a large number of animated gifs.
A website called Geocities-izer will make your site look like a Geocities page. You can see what it does to the New York Times homepage here. Services like Facebook and Tumblr allow web users to have an online presence without their pages looking amateurish.
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