Posts by Samuel Bayliss

HP ProLiant power supplies 'may die when dormant'

I share this guys experience : Would anyone at HP like to take a look at my supplies?

During a weekend power-down for electrical testing, our two Proliant G5s were unplugged from the UPS and left disconnected for two days. When reconnected - I couldn't get them to start, no LEDs, no fans, nothing at all. All four power supplies seemed completely dead. Since they were out of warranty, I ordered four replacements (cursing mildly), but after 36 hours (plugged in) - all had returned to life. Environmental conditions might be one possibility, but so is NBTI wear-out in the power electronics. But the G5's are four years old - and our newer Proliant 380 G6/G7 which have a different common power supply were unaffected. It would be nice to know my power supplies will last for another two years.

Raised res iPad 2 to sport four-core chip?

A5 is such an inappropriate name.

ARM already sells IP for a processor it calls Cortex A5. It's a small in-order processor which (like its A9 contemporary) can be deployed in a 2-4 core SMP system and is binary compatible with all the bells and whistles of ARMv7 architecture. There's going to be a lot of inappropriate compiler flags set if we end up with these two conflicting names.

Pano Logic gives VMware case of VDS 2.0

What are they smoking!!!

"Pano's solution to the unnecessary desktop software is a 100% hardware client that has no CPU, no memory, no operating system, and no software, so it requires zero maintenance and has no security risks. Combined with server-based virtualization, Pano delivers a superior Windows experience."

Hmm... I can't believe they have implemented this without a CPU, memory and software... Unless they built a thin client in an ASIC/FPGA... but that would be stupid... what a pile of marketing bunkum.

Top brass want more cash for science class

Attracting top students to STUDY Science and Engineering is just the start.

I graduated from Imperial College in London last year in the top handful of students in my year, and I am the only student to go on to a technical role outside of the banking/management consultancy cabal. Even with a great engineering job, it goes without saying that my starting salary was about 70% that of my contemporaries in the city.

With the cream of science and engineering students skimmed off every year, pushing more mediocre talent through the university system seems like a very expensive and inefficient way for the CBI's members to improve their graduate intake (albeit, they did not obviously propose fund 1k stipends themselves). A far better strategy would be to pay above average starting salaries (>£30k for Imperial graduates) and make it clear how their company rewards (pay, bonus, respect) and nurtures (training, innovation time) talent.