Mar
06

Apple Gets Nervous About Windows Mobile?

Here’s a good summary on MSMobiles of an incident recently involving Apple and a WM enthusiast. This fellow developed an interface that mimic’ed the iPhone but deployed it to his Elton M600 Pocket PC, showing off the same gesturing capabilities and pretty icons as seen at the Apple convention last month.

Then he posts a video to Youtube and that’s when all hell breaks loose, the Apple attorneys came down on the poor fellow, reasons why i’ll leave to your imagination. Here’s his personal site with blog posts discussing the what’s what and who’s who the smack-down and follow-up with the Apple letter that includes his hand drawn UI on paper in place of the software UI that he calls the PaperPhoneUI. Confused yet?

Mar
06

Digg.com Is Hiring

Digg.com posted a job description for a Senior Systems Engineer position at their site in the San Francisco area. The JD is on craigslist here, below is the ‘General Functions’ descriptions, go to the link for the full details on qualifications (PHP, MySQL, Apache, Unix,) and responsibilities (servers, servers, servers).

GENERAL FUNCTIONS:
digg.com is a user driven social content website. We are looking for an experienced Senior Systems Engineer, with a background in managing Linux server clusters at high volume Web sites.

To succeed in this position at digg, you’ll need to have be very adaptable to performing multiple disparate tasks and ample curiosity about how our code impacts our systems and how to constantly improve the stability and performance of our server environment. A very focused and relaxed attitude is essential. We have a small, self-driven team without much bureaucracy. If you can deal with a loose organization structure with high expectations of performance, then we’d like to talk to you.

Contact opsjobs@digg.com for details.

Mar
06

Tux-shaped PC Gains Dynamic Web Server Stack

Italian embedded software specialist Kdev is shipping a linux based firmware for a RISC based single board computer with a Tux shaped case.

Read LinuxDevices.com for the specs and more information as well as the ‘full frontal view‘ of Tux. :roll:

Here’s the Kdev site with more technical specs of the SBC, seems to include a full featured Apache embedded WebServer with PHP 5 (along with some of your favorite php scripts), SQLite and more. The cost is well over US$200 for the SBC and case.

Below is a pic of the Acme Fox board and the case.

Kdev Acme Fox board

Tux' Rear

Mar
05

Video Tour Of The Linux Kernel

Want to see a video tour of the linux kernel? Well, after you see it you’ll agree that it’s not actually a tour, it’s simply a 3D rendering of how some of the feature modules link to other modules within and outside a few features.

What you’ll probably see pretty quickly is that while it has the potential to show you the simplicity of the Linux core operating system, the video doesn’t go far enough towards showing how the various features are dependent or interdependent.

I’ve seen a similar (but 2D) rendering of IIS & Apache that is used as a reason to show how complex the dependencies are and (supposedly) results in a less stable feature – pics below.

Anyway, the reason i’m posting this and linking to the Youtube video is because it’s mildly interesting, yet I’d really like to see more more detail on the linux kernel.

Apache Apache

IIS IIS

Mar
05

Fact or Fiction: Living People Outnumber the Dead?

Since the 1970′s there has been a ‘fact’ or statement thrown around, without evidence, to highlight the overpopulation issues many urban areas and some nations face. This myth stated that the number of people alive on the planet today outnumber the combined total of all dead people aggregated throughout mankind’s history.

Since the planet is sustaining approximately 6.5 billion people today, then this would mean that in the previous 50,000 years less than 6.5 billion people have ever lived and died. That seems reasonable, right?

Not true, says demographer Carl Haub. According to his research, slightly over 106 billion people had ever been born, significantly more than the 6.5 billion alive today.

[Found via Kottke.org]