Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 11th Aug 2010 19:14 UTC, submitted by Cytor
Due to me not working for OSNews these past eight weeks, I've been a bit out of the loop, as I didn't really follow technology news. I did notice that a lot is going on in OpenSolaris land, and today, Oracle has outlined what it has planned for Solaris 11 - and according to some, the fears about OpenSolaris' future were justified.
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RE[6]: Is it bad? Not really.
by segedunum on Fri 13th Aug 2010 17:27
in reply to "RE[5]: Is it bad? Not really."
Member since:2005-07-06
The other issue to consider is that there is a large industry around ZFS-based storage solutions.......
Is there? I must have blinked because I missed it.
The storage industry consists of established players using things like VxFX and clustered filesystems. Sun came late into the storage market with ZFS hoping to capture some of that established market share as a cheaper alternative, and they've had rather mixed success.
Someone looking for a turnkey solution, for a simple "plug it in and go" box, it's easy to end up with a box that uses ZFS internally (Nexenta, GreenBytes, even FreeNAS, for example).
Hmmmm, so that's what you consider to be a 'storage industry'? I'm afraid installing Nexenta or FreeNAS yourself is not a storage industry.
All (and I mean all) of the 'turnkey', small and cheap commercial NAS and storage boxes I have seen use Linux and generally XFS as filesystem. Not a single one runs Solaris or ZFS. Btrfs already has a ready and established market that Linux itself is already in.
RE[7]: Is it bad? Not really.
by phoenix on Fri 13th Aug 2010 17:35
in reply to "RE[6]: Is it bad? Not really."
Member since:2005-07-11
Who's talking about "small and cheap" or NAS? That's the home market, not the commercial market.
If it has fewer than 12 drives in it, it's not a storage box worth mentioning here.
Btrfs is nowhere to be found when you get into real storage solutions. The NetApp, EMC, Veritas, Greenbytes market, not the home "2-drives in a box with an ethernet port" market.
You can spend a couple hundred grand for an iSCSI/FC box from NetApp or EMC. Or less for a Greenbytes box using ZFS+. Or less for a Solaris box using ZFS. Or even less for a custom white-box with OSol/FreeBSD using ZFS.
I've yet to see a single product in this area that boasts about using Linux and/or Btrfs.
Sure, maybe Linux has taken over the "2 drives in a box with an ethernet port" market. But who cares? That's not was enterprises, businesses (even medium-sized ones), or even school districts are looking at.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/20/13 6:17 UTC, submitted by MOS6510
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 23:02 UTC, submitted by M.Onty
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 22:28 UTC
"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.More News »
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2005-07-11
The other issue to consider is that there is a large industry around ZFS-based storage solutions, and absolutely 0 companies using Btrfs as the basis for a storage solution. Someone looking for a turnkey solution, for a simple "plug it in and go" box, it's easy to end up with a box that uses ZFS internally (Nexenta, GreenBytes, even FreeNAS, for example). There's nothing like that available for Btrfs.