Inchoate Curmudgeon

The availability of larger multi-core and multi-processor x86 systems brings powerful new tools into our architectural arsenals for reducing space and power in our data centers, and simplifying and upgrading our data center footprints. For virtualization, larger systems are attractive since they provide a larger pool of resources for a group of guest OS images […]

An elaboration of the concept of an application running on a server requires a decomposition of the host type. Hosts and applications may run on a simple host where there is no IP associated with the application, applications may run in a cluster as a service with their own distinct IP, and applications may run […]

I got a big can of whoop-ass when I opened an email from a friend regarding my blogging today. “So, do you just sit around in your bathrobe and think of these things to blog about?!? And, when you aren’t in such deep thoughts (like the tin man?), are you taking playing with your new […]

My father’s mother died recently. Both his parents are gone now. I’m slow, and its taking me some time to think through what my grandparents meant to me. My grandfather, Stewart Springer, met my grandmother, Vergie Fayard, when she was a librarian in Biloxi, Mississippi. He was an outsider. He was making a living catching […]

A CNET article on 1TB drives, “1-terabyte drive to debut later this year“, states “Granted, few people really need 1 terabyte of storage.” I don’t think so. My boxes of 4.7Gb DVDs holding a paltry 6 months of pictures from my new super-wamperdyne digital camera says different. And its only getting worse. What happens when […]

Thank you Mighty Seek, for Hands On Series - Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Part 1! It is an excellent, hands-on walk-through podcast on ‘Cross Site Scripting’ (XSS). XSS a method for exploiting vulnerabilities in output validation and formatting. This is a part of what is shaping up to be an excellent series of podcasts on […]

In Automated Detachment? Patrick laments dealing with IT managers constantly on the prowl for the quick fix. Infrastructure managers are looking to take the thought out of building and maintaining and improving the processes used to manage the infrastructure and support business needs. They are looking for easy templates, quick hits that will yield drastic improvements […]

In Enterprise 2.0 Think Tank Deepak states One of the recurring topics that kept popping up is Governance. And this is really key, because it is a very important aspect that […]

A web search of forced ranking yields hundreds of links discussing the practice of ranking employees by human resource organizations for various purposes. This is not what I mean by the term here. Forced ranking is the reasoned selection of candidates from competing projects, tasks, initiatives, scenarios and features. Components of the exercise involve quantifying and […]

In Is IT Scared of SOA?, regarding IT shops ‘afraid of SaaS’, Dave Linthicum discusses the fear in traditional IT ranks to SOA and SaaS. Although it correctly points to shortcomings in explaining the value proposition of SOA, this is only half the story. The darker flip-side to this situation is that IT departments are well […]