May Your Holidays Be the Happiest! |
It is so hard to think that the year is almost over. And, for most, with few regrets! I'm actually heartened that the shopping news is better than last year, because I'm expecting next year to be MUCH better. Shopping is just one measure of how people feel about the upcoming holidays, and how people feel about each other and about life in general, so up is good. I loved the one measure – people are buying more but spending less.
Think about it.
We at SemCo™ wish all of you a wonderful holiday season. It's a great time to be with friends and family, and share time, best wishes, and, yes, gifts. What do you want this year? Electronics are expected to be the #1 gift, so maybe a Driod? A netbook? How about a Kindle (already top from Amazon)? Whatever your holiday brings – have a wonderful time, smile and laugh loads, get and give lots of hugs, and keep in touch….
Here's the schedule or you can view the complete schedule on our Website:
CSTA Web sessions:
December 9, 10
January 20, 21
March 3, 4
UITJ (Understanding IT Jobs) Web sessions:
December 10
March 4
TR Web sessions:
February 10
The Cloud Web session:
December 8
Keep in touch - I love hearing from you - and keep up with technology!
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Green IT
Green IT is like "green" anything else. It starts with paying attention to the use of energy – but then goes on to any activity that protects the environment. Green IT is big right now and has become a major factor in corporate decisions about products and technologies. It affects both hardware and software.
In hardware, the greenest technology is multi-core processors. Putting two or more processing cores on a single chip is now common, with quad-core (4 processors) chips becoming standard. Octo (8) cores exist and AMD is planning Interlagos processors with between 12 and 16 cores on a single chip (by 2011). Even our personal computers now have multi-core processors to make the systems run faster. This allows a single machine to do more work, which cuts down on the number of computers a company needs, which cuts down on the energy needed. It does work.
In addition to multi-core processors, the blade systems also cut down on the number of systems A server blade, or blade server, combines multiple processors in a chassis, or rack, and the power is supplied to the chassis. The Cloudrack system from Rackable combines processors on trays in a cabinet, with the power going to the cabinet. Both methods reduce the amount of power needed.
Software, of course, comes up with the biggest effect and that's with virtualization. The software pools together resources and manages them from a single point. The resources, which include both processors and storage, can then be assigned to users only as needed and returned to the pool when free. Server virtualization software builds a pool of servers that can be allocated to tasks, applications, databases, or the Internet, as needed. The server pool includes virtual machines which are built by allowing multiple operating systems to run in one physical machine. The server pool then contains many more "systems" than physically exist, yet the same amount of work gets done.
Virtualization has led to the existence and growth of cloud computing. With cloud computing, users subscribe to hosted functions which include storage management, development tools, applications, database processing, etc. The host supplies the resources as needed and maintains the processors and servers to support many, many users. Because one user's peak time and need for many resources will inevitably be another user's down time, fewer physical resources are needed over time.
Other aspects of green it include managing e-waste, data center design, and planned recycling. A critical part of Green IT is managing e-waste. Just to start, it's estimated that there are over 500 million obsolete computers in the U.S., and over 130 million cell phones are discarded every year. The problem is more than the numbers, the toxicity of many materials in these devices means that e-waste can end up exacting a higher toll on public health than most waste. The hardware vendors are concentrating on this aspect by controlling the material they use. Apple, for one, bans a long list of toxic substances from its products, including asbestos, cadmium, mercury and lead. Other vendors have similar bans.
Data center design includes planning that allows proper placement of vented tiles and putting cooling systems closer to heat sources. This provides shorter air paths for moving cool air, resulting in far less power needed to push the air. Also recommended is the use of energy-efficient lighting, such as Energy Star-qualified compact fluorescent bulbs that use 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and are estimated by the EPA to last 10 times longer.
Environmentally safe recycling centers are built for electronic equipment*, and the hardware vendors are active in support recycling plans. For example, both Sun Microsystems and Microsoft sponsor active recycling and reuse programs designed to keep electronics out of the waste stream. At Sun, customers can participate in the company's hardware upgrade program, where they can return end-of-life equipment at no cost. Sun then ships the equipment to a third-party vendor, which dismantles the equipment and returns any useful parts to Sun.
* To find an environmentally responsible recycling center near you, check out two Web sites recommended by the EPA: the Electronic Industries Alliance site and the International Association of Electronics Recyclers site.
Get ready – enroll now.
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1. Which of the following does not belong?
Cookie
Cupcake
Donut
Éclair
Flan
2. What's the difference between Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office v14?
3. What's the difference between Droid and Android?
4. MapReduce technology is used in what kind of systems?
5. What is ESSO?
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It's a great time to stay current and get caught up with everything going on. Clean out your closets and your desk, file away last year's papers, and get ready.
That's what we're doing. We're actually ending the decade that no one ever knew what to call (the naughts – the zeroes – the oos) and starting the teens (or the tens). And, we do know what IT will be doing:
More virtualization, more cloud computing, more Web applications.
Smaller hardware, faster hardware, greener hardware.
Larger data stores, dispersed data stores, Web data stores.
We know these things are coming, so December is a great time to solidify you knowledge in all these areas. If you haven't taken CSTA – sign up now! Make sure you're comfortable with these topics, because the other things that will happen in the teen decade are:
???????????????
That's right. We don't know. Yet. Clear the decks and get ready for anything. Remember the forecast from 2005: "You won't believe the changes that will occur over the next ten years." We're halfway there, but 2010-2015 are still ahead of us.
It's going to be exciting!!
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"Think About It"
January's TechConnections should be fun. The "I predict.." articles will be coming out throughout December with more to come in January. Therefore instead of including a "short vocabulary" article to introduce the topic for the technical article in January, I'm going to leave it open. I don't want to commit now, I want to wait to see what the technical writers and bloggers are highlighting. However, if you think something's going to be really hot in 2010, or if you have something you really want to know more about, let me know. I'll be waiting until the end of the month to decide what to talk about.
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1. Choice a) cookie does not belong. All the others are code names for the releases of the Android SDK (Software Development Kit). Cupcake was 1.5; Donut is 1.6 (just released this October); and Flan and Éclair are reserved for future releases.
2. None. Microsoft Office 2010 is version 14.0 of the package. The package was released to beta in November.
3. Droid is a smart phone. Android is the operating system (written by Google) that the Droid uses. Actually there are two Droids: Motorola's Droid and HTC's Droid Aris (both were released in November)
4. MapReduce is used with database management systems – specifically with systems designed to hold huge amounts of data, as in data warehousing, analytics, and some Web systems.
5. Checking on your age – ESSO is the old name of the company now called EXXON. Seriously, it stands for Enterprise Single Sign-On, and works with private clouds. From Oracle..
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