A few miles from the glitzy casinos of the Las Vegas strip stands a highly secure, 407,000-square foot building which — according to the man who operates it — is the most energy efficient, high-density data center in the world.
Rob Roy, the CEO, founder and chairman of Switch Communications Group, is walking the halls of his seventh and most impressive data center, the SuperNAP, from which he provides co-location services to some of the world’s biggest organizations. At 3 p.m., one hour into giving a tour, it’s clear that Roy is not a man who easily runs out of energy.
Vegas data center bets on 100% uptime - Network World
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SAN FRANCISCO — The global credit crisis may have caused the decline in consumer and business spending that is assaulting the giants of high tech. But as the dominant technology companies try to emerge from this slump, they may find themselves blaming people like David Title just as much as they blame Wall Street.
Mr. Title, a 35-year-old new-media manager at a film production company in New York, has dropped his cable subscription and moved to watching most of his television online — free. While shopping for a new laptop for his girlfriend recently, he sidestepped more expensive full-featured computers and picked a bare-bones, $200 Asus EeePC laptop, also known as a netbook.
“We’ve reached one of those moments in tech history when there are low-priced and free alternatives that are both user-friendly and reliable enough to make the switch,” Mr. Title said. “Then there’s the extra bonus of saving some cash.”
$200 Laptops Break a Business Model - NYTimes.com
Internet, Linux
THEY’RE either hapless pests or the very people capable of overthrowing Windows. Take your pick.
In December, hundreds of these controversial software developers gathered for one week at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. They came from all over the world, sporting many of the usual signs of software mercenaries: jeans, ponytails, unruly facial hair and bloodshot eyes.
But rather than preparing to code for the highest bidder, the developers were coordinating their largely volunteer effort to try to undermine Microsoft’s Windows operating system for PCs, which generated close to $17 billion in sales last year.
All the fuss at the meeting centered on something called Ubuntu and a man named Mark Shuttleworth, the charismatic 35-year-old billionaire from South Africa who functions as the spiritual and financial leader of this coding clan.
Ubuntu and Its Leader Set Sights on the Mainstream - NYTimes.com
Linux
Australian Geoff Huston is one of the foremost authorities on Internet routing and scaling issues. We sent Huston a few questions about the U.S. government’s plan to bolster R&D to secure the Internet’s core routing protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
Detecting Internet routing “lies” - Network World
Internet, Security
The U.S. federal government is accelerating its efforts to secure the Internet’s routing system, with plans this year for the Department of Homeland Security to quadruple its investment in research aimed at adding digital signatures to router communications.DHS says its routing security effort will prevent routing hijack attacks as well as accidental misconfigurations of routing data. The effort is nicknamed BGPSEC because it will secure the Internet’s core routing protocol known as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). (A separate federal effort is under way to bolster another Internet protocol, DNS, and it is called DNSSEC.)
U.S. plots major upgrade to Internet router security - Network World
Internet, Security
Google has begun preaching the wonders of IPv6 in the hope more awareness will help expedite the transition from the legacy IPv4 networks most people use today.
During a presentation at this year’s linux.conf.au in Hobart, senior Google software engineer Angus Lees recalled how Google’s IPv6 efforts started as a covert, hobbyist project about two years ago and has gained enough momentum that a AAAA record for google.com could be added to Google’s DNS in a year.
Google ramps up IPv6 mission, google.com a year away - Network World
IPv6, Internet
Education and healthcare have been early adopters of 100+Mbps 802.11n WLANs. Now Cisco wants the rest of the enterprise market to take the plunge.By John Cox, NetworkWorld.com, 01/14/09
Cisco Aironet 1140: 802.11n for the mainstream - Network World
Network, Wireless
Galois is pleased to announce that Cryptol, the language of cryptography, is now available to the public!
Cryptol is a domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms, developed over the past decade by Galois for the United States National Security Agency. It has been used successfully in a number of projects, and is also in use at Rockwell Collins, Inc.
Galois › Blog › Blog » Cryptol, the language of cryptography, now available
Security
Kim Zetter writes …
Reports from the Mediterranean indicate that two of the undersea cables severed and repaired earlier this year have been cut again, disrupting internet access and phone service between the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia. An additional third cable is down in the same region
Undersea Cables Cut; 14 Countries Lose Web — Updated | Threat Level from Wired.com
Internet
Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously we have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions, Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP, Chet Ramey about his experiences maintaining Bash, Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame and to Charles H. Moore about the design and development of Forth. We’ve also had a chat with the irreverent Don Woods about the development and uses of INTERCAL, as well as Stephen C. Johnson on YACC, Luca Cardelli on Modula-3, Walter Bright on D, and more recently, Simon Peyton-Jones on Haskell.
This time we chat with Larry Wall, creator of the Perl programming language and regarded as the father of modern scripting languages.
Computerworld - The A-Z of Programming Languages: Perl
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