It’s good to be HP

HP “All your dataz and money belong to us”
Navy “… um, ok”

I’m sure the actual negotiations did not proceed like that but that was probably the gist of it. Getting government contracts are certainly nice, especially if you’re lucky enough to lock them in with your hardware. That is the case between HP and the Navy. 10 years and 10 billion dollars later the Navy is still stuck using HP’s equipment. Say hello to a fresh 5 year deal. The Navy relies on HP to maintain email communications across it’s network which operates at a fraction of storage space per user than a regular Gmail account. Updates cripple the network, workstations cost $4k, wiping data from 400 PCs at a tune of $5 million. Ouch. Someone call in the marines. (link)

Mobile wars

Looks like momentum is shifting in the Canadian wireless market. The roll out of the HSPA network for the olympics, then the iPhone came to Bell and Telus, and now victory in court. I’ve always found the so called “intangible” claims to be silly. The most reliable network? Really? How exactly is that measured? You might as well say that you have more cell towers so you don’t get dropped calls. And soon Rogers won’t be able to claim that they are the fastest either. So whats left for Rogers? Jack up cable bills to cover the loss in wireless revenue.

This is nothing like the At&T vs Verizon slapfest. However the momentum shift is very similar. Users have been complaining about AT&T and their iPhones for a long time. However the divide between service levels in Canada isn’t quite the same as it is in the U.S.

West is dominated by Telus. East is Rogers. Bell is sprinkled across the country. Major cities are pretty much covered by all of them. If you’re out in the county, you might find service lacking.

Goodbye monopoly

Well what do we have here? Who knew Telus and Bell could put together a HSPA so quickly in time for the Olympics no doubt AND (score!) a fresh deal with Apple. So expect a whole new offering of phones from both networks for the upcoming Christmas rush. But with new networks there will be bugs to work out, especially with something rushed to market. There’s going to be a whole lot of network traffic, who knows how well it will hold up under the stress.

However if you’re sick of the Rogers bullshit then feel free to try out the competitors. Iphone sales are expected to start up as early as next month (November) so get ready to spend some money on a new phone. So long as your phone is HSPA compatible you may not even need to get a new phone.

Screw you guys, I’m rewriting the Interweb

If you’re the government of an internationally disliked country, dealing with daily (by the minute) cyber attacks against your digital infrastructure, it can sometimes get to you. Then by chance some genius decides, “I’m tired of this shit! I’m gonna rewrite the Interweb!” Sounds ridiculous right? Well you’d be wrong. You see for the most powerful country in the world (maybe the universe if you don’t count the Romulans) nothing’s impossible.

Instead of say … fixing … the problems the U.S. Air Force has decided to do just that, rewrite the Internet. The objectives of the Air Force Research Lab Cyber Defense program is to: turn hostile traffic into cartoon anime gifs, identify hackers and launch bombing runs on their mother’s homes, and making their networks an impenetrable fortress. (I’m paraphrasing of course)

Um … yeah. Good luck with that.

Thecus N3200PRO NAS

I’m sure you’ve seen NAS (network attached storage) before so what’s so different about the N3200PRO? It’s powered by an AMD Geode™ CPU. It supports 3 SATA drives, RAID 5, a little lcd keeps you in the loop of your drive status. Connect a USB wireless adapter and you won’t even have to worry about network cables. Share photos and even set up an iTunes music server or, for the security conscious, plug in a webcam and keep tabs on the babysitter. A simple data solution for the home user. Never have to worry about data recovery with a RAID set up protecting your data. Now, what was that nanny wearing again? (link)