Fixing everything, really slowly

(cross-posted from my new work blog: grid things)

I recently presented at HP-CAST in Hamburg, Germany. The title was “Grid in Financial Services and Science: a comparison” to a tutorial session called “Portals, Grids, Clouds”.

I hadn’t intended to talk about clouds initialy but I decided to change the content to fit the tutorial session. I was quite pleased with the end result and the reception I got was pretty good so I thought I’d share the slides here.

Found via the still vaguely useful system news (formally Sun system news) site:

Oracle WebLogic Server can now run directly on Oracle VM without an operating system, a unique capability enabled by Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition.

This caught my eye because it’s kind of lame that Java applications in virtualised environments have to run behind so many layers of abstraction (Java Virtual Machine, Operating System, Visualised Server). You can read more about the product here:

What strikes me is a total lack of mention of the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and the requirement that the product will only run under OracleVM. What a lost opportunity.

It’s one thing that they are locking customers in to their virtualization product (rather than letting them use VMWare, Citrix XenServer or Hyper-V), but its darn right stupid that it doesn’t support their own Virtualization products VirtualBox or the Xen implementation in Solaris.

I hate to judge early but it seems Oracle hasn’t changed one bit with the acquisition with Sun. They will continue to make overpriced products which needlessly lock customers in. I think that’s a shame.

Still, it would be interesting to know what they use for a file system in this thing.

I sometimes get asked about energy savings from thin clients. It’s fairly straightforward to work out the energy consumption of the clients, but it’s harder know how how much power to budget for on the server side. Without specific requirements it really is a case of “it depends”.

While reading the excelent Virtual Reality Check – Phase II (via Virtualization.info) I was amazed that they didn’t even mention power consumption. Their tests showed that you could support between 80 and 165 user sessions from the test hardware (an HPDL380G6). I was interested to find out how much power this server uses, the answer (after way too long with HP’s Windows only, yet HTML, and Flash based Power Advisor) is about 410Watts, that’s between 5 and 2.5 Watts per user. Not bad!

Now I’d be the first to say that this hardware setup isn’t wat you’d use (or all that you’d need) in a thin client deployment of this size, but still it’s an impressive number. As the Virtual Reality Check report says the improvements in the last year are almost entirely due to CPU improvements from Intel. Nehalem certainly is quick.

Absolutely fascinating reading on the state of IT security and corporate espionage.

At this point, [the hackers] move laterally through the network, compromising systems as they go and using other exploits to attack additional vulnerabilities. The systems being compromised are Windows systems.

Stolen e-mail messages and documents are collected and stored on a staging server inside the company’s network before being encrypted with custom algorithms and compressed into an .rar file. The files are then siphoned out in small random bursts generally via normal protocols with spoofed headers to disguise the activity. In the case of the Google hack, the attackers used an SSL port but a custom protocol.

From: Report Details Hacks Targeting Google, Others | Wired.com.

I’m guessing sales of statefull packet inspecting firewalls will increase this year! It’s sad reading about exploits caused by organisations not following common sense security best practices.

In a funny way these compromises actually validate Google security approach. For example they are:

• Openly encouraging people to move to more up to date browsers
• Making there own open source browser (chrome) which focuses on security thus publicly demonstrating how to solve the very problems being exploited.
• Making web based applications which they can manage and apply security best practices to, thus partially outsourcing the challenges of maintaing secure applications for businesses (I really like their new browser based pdf viewer).

I’m guessing they are cracking down on internal IE usage right now. If I were maintaing an IT department I think I’d configure the proxies and firewalls to forward all outbound traffic from old browsers to a page outlining internal browser policy and offering download links for new ones (after having provided and promoted official alternatives and provided workarrounds for web developers).

Anyone know of a good neutral third party website you can point people to to learn about browsers?

Thanks for trying to access the microsite for Sigh No More – Mumford & Sons

Unfortunately due to contractual restrictions, access to this promotion is not available to residents of Finland.

From Push Entertainment (if you are in finland).

Yet another case of legal nonsense stopping fans listening to music. This is particularly stupid since I was trying to access “bonus content” for those that “own a copy of sigh no more”.

Before signing to a major label (Island) Mumford and sons did a good job of promoting themselves using sites like myspace and rawrip. The latter lets them give away tracks to fans or sell them and take 100% of the money. I was hoping they might get big without a major label to help.

I’d downloaded their first two singles and listened to the tracks tons (as well as the tracks on myspace) all for free. When the album came out I bought it straight away. I’ve paid to see the band at least 5 times. I’m a fan that wants to support some musicians trying to earn a living.

Its sad to see large corporations continue to screw it up like this.

Island records: The internet is global and so is your market. Adapt or die.

BTW: Sigh no more is an amazing album!

I’ve read so many of these now it feels like I’m cheating and, but I’ll do it anyway!
Sadly I’ve not done predictions before, so I can’t share with you how wrong I was last year.
Hopefully this will be entertaining in some other, as yet undermined, way.

Google Chrome will overtake Firefox in browser market share

Many of the users that hated IE and switched to Firefox will switch to Chrome. They will then do the same on their parents and grandparents computers. By next Christmas Chrome will overtake Firefox and will start to eat into IE’s market share too.

Reasons for change will be: Stability, transparent updates (no nagging), ease of use (especially for the older generations)

Wave goodbye: relic of the IT industry

Dispite all the wizzy demos, Google Wave solves a problem most people don’t have (or don’t know they have). The effort of switching to Wave outweighs the benefits.

Remeber Microsoft Bob? Wave will die, but unlike Bob we will see it copied elsewhere, and soon. It will be viewed as a grand proof of concept of what social networks can become. Facebook and maybe twitter will borrow some of the better ideas and Google themselves may integrate Wave into some of their existing communities (YouTube? Orkut?).

Tablets and Google Chrome OS will not take off in 2010

Tablets remind me of the … oh yeah Tablet PC. I just don’t see what has changed that makes this a viable platform. People don’t like voice or handwriting recognition, they don’t much like onsreen keyboards either. I’m not sure even Apple’s hype machine will get people excited about this form factor for it to take off.

Phones will continue to stay small and get more powerful. Laptops will get cheaper and more portable. Tablets will be squeezed into an ever decreasing gap.

Chrome OS looks really, really good, but I’m not sure it will become popular this year either. For one the device will be seen as almost useless without internet connection. No Chrome OS will need more time, and it won’t sell many Tablets.

People who read blogs rather than a daily newspaper might like one of these, but they will probably carry on using their laptop and “wait till the get cheaper”.

Google will get further into the music business.

As a music fan I’ve realised google sucks for music. It’s one of the few things I don’t search for much directly (I use last.fm or discogs.com or spotify). Google will address this firstly by rolling out their music search previews internationally leveraging their partners (which rather interestingly includes LaLa whom Apple recently acquired), then maybe by aquiring or developing an iTunes-like desktop media player/library.

I suspect they are as frustrated by the lawyer run music industry as consumers are (don’t you just love it when spotify has the track, but it can’t be played in your country). I suspect they are as frustrated by the music industry as they are with the telco industry and regulators.Till now they have stayed out of music sales and out of mp3′s and devices. Now with Android they have a bit of a gap.

Apple has iTunes, iTunes music store and the iPod/iPhone. Amazon has a direct store and their store is integrated into doubletwist and songbird both of which sync your music to lots of devices. Napster is integrated into Windows Media Player which syncs many devices. Spotify Mobile lets you play music on iPhones and Android mobiles.

Google just has an okish mp3 player on Android phones, and little ecosystem: no desktop player, no means of syncing devices. In one way it’s a nice situation for consumers since there is none of the lock-in of the iTunes/iPod world (which is what happens when you let lawyers design technology), but its not straightforward enough for people to plug in their phones and sync music to them.

Google has in the past bought companies to bridge gaps in their offerings. Picasa filled a similar sized gap when google bought them a few years back, letting you pull photo’s off your device and onto the internet.

If Picassa is Googles answer to iPhoto where is there answer to iTunes?

The iTunes/iTunes Music Store/iPod/iPhone dominance will begin to decline.

Competition and consumer awareness will force Apple to adapt and it will no longer set the pace in this area. More consumers will realise how restrictive iTunes is start using other music library tools.

The iTunes Music Store will be forced to lower prices further and will launch a stand alone website where users can buy music without iTunes. The new iTunes store will offer full track streaming audio like spotify does, but probably only for tracks you have purchased or a monthly subscription – no ads. Users will stop buying iPods by default and instead use a wider range of devices to play music, especially mobile phones. This diversification and openness will benefit everyone and Apple will remain a major player albeit not always leading the industry.

The other iTunes store products like movies and mobile applications will prove less sticky and users will get this content from other providers. Movies and TV shows will begin to be sold direct from the studios, applications will be downloaded directly to phones without centralised control (like Android does).

Android (google’s open source mobile phone operating system) will become the #1 mobile operating system

The sheer number of vendors selling Android devices will drive the platform to a leading position. Several vendors (Motorola?) will go Android-only for their high end phones, saving on development costs by using the free and open source platform. Nokia will continue to do it’s own thing and struggle to compete as a result.

Low cost Android phones will appear as free upgrades to many people on phone contracts. This new audience will get the app bug and a whole new wave of useless fart applications will flood the Android store.

Interesting apps will then start to be released/updated on Android first and then ported to iPhone, Blackberry etc later.

As the Android open source project gains momentum more ‘distributions’ of Android will emerge. Some will come from the vendors who will lump extra crap on top of the stock OS (HTC Sense is an early example of this). This will mirror the situation of buying Windows laptops where vendors “add value” by installing the Yahoo toolbar. The Android technical community will continue to produce lightweight distributions which run faster than the stock OS and these will become well known (like linux distributions are today) in the technical community.

Ultimately consumers will want less crap on their phones, but only the geeks and power users will care enough this year to change their phone’s OS and the rapid acceleration in mobile CPUs will mask the worse effects at the expense of battery life.

Argumented Reality (AR) won’t take off, local search will.

I read much hype about AR, but it won’t be used much. It’s fun to play with for 5 minutes, but it doesn’t really help you find stuff.

Instead I think Google maps (and the decent copies of it) will be what people use. Because it works well and you can see where stuff is. One or more popular mobile searches like “pizza”, “bar” or “toilet” will be in the top ten overall searches of 2010.

Apple will begin to be viewed in the same light as Microsoft (i.e. disliked)

Come on! Bundling everything including a browser and music/movie/TV/application shop with the OS? Isn’t this way worse than what the US and EU sued Microsoft over? Expensive hardware. Lock in. Desktops, laptops and mp3 players that only work with their stuff.

Why do we tolerate this? It looks nice. It works (mostly).

I can’t see this goodwill lasting (and I use a MacBook and an iPod).

A new popular TV series will be distributed solely on-line

The Wire, Lost, The Sopranos, 24 … these are stronger brands than most TV stations and music/media stores. With social networks it is now possible to promote a new show very cheaply and effectively. It will take a brave studio or production company and some genuinely good content and then we can begin to take out the middlemen. This will start to end the nonsense which is geographically staggered releases and 40 minutes of good TV interrupted every 10 mins with loud adverts selling crap I don’t need.

Heck people are already downloading stuff on bittorrent just to see it before its on TV and then they go out and buy the box set. We citizens are good people who would like to give money to creative people who make good content!

Update: I made a mistake in my original post about who bought LaLa the music streaming company. I said it was Google that bought the company, but it was in fact Apple. Google partner with LaLa among others for their US-only music-streaming-search. I guess this a partnership which might not last given the souring relationship between Apple and Google.