Daniel’s Blog

Here are some predictions for Computing & IT in 2009:

• Hardware
  • More and more Cloud Computing services (and improvements)
  • Personal Supercomputer Hardware (such as NVidia Tesla)
• Software
  • Advancement of ease-of-use in Operating Systems, particularly Linux… which will see more of a take up this year than ever before.
  • Browsers (particularly Mozilla-based and Opera) will start to contain more and more Semantic Web based features.
• Web
  • More people and organisations providing Semantic Web services. Leaders in this field will help greatly, such as the BBC, BT and the UK Government.
  • The original developers and advocates of the Semantic Web, will start to move away from it a little in an attempt to improve the semantics of the Semantic Web. Areas such as Fuzzy Logic, Bayesian Probability, Advanced Description Logic, Intelligent Agents and Artificial Neural Networks will be bridged with the Semantic Web by researchers.
  • Web development will become more and more like desktop application development.
  • Web design will become more focused on providing the data rather than providing pictures, fusing with Information Architecture.

BUT! More importantly, things may seem to slow down in terms of development within the computing field. This won’t be entirely the case, we’ll see more efficiency improvements than feature additions… and these developments will probably help the efficiency of those companies using that software/hardware.

Although I’ve mentioned all of this. Please note that I truly feel that we should move away from a materialistic view to a more societal and/or spiritual point of view. This means that although new things may be released in the future, we should recognise them, but not be tempted by them if they are not necessary updates.

Just a note to say that if you are in the Oxford area on the 6th February (2008) then please, please come to the Oxford Geek Night 5. Its at the Jericho Tavern Pub in Oxford and starts at 7:30pm. It features a bit of socialising, a bit of watching presentations and some fun.

If you do come then please come and say hello

Many thanks,

Daniel

Links:

• Oxford Geek Night 5
  

Technorati Tags: oxford, geek, night, oxfordgeeknight, ogn5, jerichotavern, jericho

Hi Everybody,

Just letting you all know that I am probably not going to be around on my blog / skype /other-web-based-service much at the moment. This is because the hard drive in my old laptop died on Thursday, it was making more noise than a the cast of Stomp! I took it to the apple store on Saturday and they are replacing the hard drive for free (because its under warrenty).

I should get my laptop back soon.

Daniel

Technorati Tags: harddrive, macbook

Apple Laptops are really lovely, except for one thing:

Electric Power

The Reasons:

• The iBook and PowerBook (G4s) had a lot of trouble with the connection into the laptop, the plugs easily broke. Two of mine had the same problem, although one still worked.
• The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros have the “MagSafe” connections… which fixes the easily broke problem. However, Apple have now had endless problems with batteries. They have a scheme to replace some of the early battery models, and a “battery update” patch for some of the new ones - but they still exhibit problems. Which brings me to the reason I am blogging about this:

My Apple MacBook battery is playing about, at least I think its the battery. It seems like many people also have similar problems, and they also think that it might be the power unit. Here is the status:

• Battery doesn’t charge when I have power plugged in, this is true when system is switched on or off
• Power unit manages to power the laptop when the battery is in and when the battery is out
• Battery LED flashes when I press the button on it
• Laptop recognises that the battery is in. When it is in it says 0% charge. When I take it out it has an x, and says no batteries detected.
• The power plug LED is solid orange when it is plugged into my laptop. This is when the laptop is on and when it is off, this is also when the battery is in and when it is not in.
• Resetting the PMU doesn’t fix the issue
• Leaving the power supply to get rid of static doesn’t fix the issue
• Leaving the battery to charge over night doesn’t charge the battery

So if you happen to be one of the Apple Genius Bar guys or an Apple Technician then could you let me know what is wrong. You can leave a comment on here or email me danieljohnlewis -at- gmail.com.

Technorati Tags: batter, apple, powersupply, problems

https://www.apple.com/xserve/

Right so the new Intel based Xserves are “5x faster than the Xserve G5″. Doesn’t make sense, the G5 based Xserve had 2 single core G5 processors. The new Xserves have 4 dual-core 64-bit Intel Xeons in… am I seeing something a bit weird here, wouldn’t that mean that the G5s are actually more powerful!!!!!

• 2 single core G5 (2.3Ghz) - 1x faster
• 4 single core G5 (2.3Ghz) - 2x faster
• 4 dual core Xeons (3Ghz) - 5x faster
• 4 dual core PPC based processors (3GHz) (e.g. The Cell) - much more powerful

Apple should have gone for the Cell Processor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_microprocessor * https://www.research.ibm.com/cell/ ). They probably would have, but couldn’t because its being developed partly by Sony - who are the evil arch-enemies of Apple.

Just realised, you’ll hardly ever see blog entries by me about hardware.

Daniel.

technorati tags:apple, xserve, mac, macintel, xeon, cell