Ubuntu 7.10 & 2 X QuadCore Dell PowerEdge SC1430

Just ordered the dual QuadCore (E5310) Dell PowerEdge SC1430 (with no OS, of course ;o)). Plan to use Ubuntu 7.10 on it.

The major functions of the box would be :

1.As a NAS/file server for home

2. For my work on many-core/concurrency/parallelism in python

3. Semantic search project for the San Jose Education Foundation

Should be interesting … I will chronicle my close encounters of the nth kind with Ubuntu 7.10, parallelism et al …

Looking forward to it

[Update Dec 13, 2007]

Memory : Bought and installed 4 GB RAM. Kingston, 2pcs 2GB PC2-5300, DDR2-667 Fully Buffered DIMM. The system came with 2 X 512 RAM. I moved them to the last 2 slots and inserted the 2 GB in the first two slots. System recognizes 5GB now !

Hard Disk – The system comes with 2 SATA Data cables wired for 2 X 3.5″ hard disks. I had Maxtor 300GB disk and it went in nicely. The blue plastic insert works very well.

DVD Drive – The system has a third SATA port, but alas, no data cable ;o( It has 2 SATA power connection, so that was not a problem. So got a SATA data cable from Fry’s, popped the bezel out, installed the DVD drive and connected the cables.

Setup : The system didn’t recogize the disk or DVD. had to move around the setup and enable SATA port 2 and 3. looks like the board can upport 4 SATA, but the 4th one has no connectors. Once enabled (SATA 2 and 3 to AUTO) the bios recognized everything.

Ubuntu: I had made a bootable iso disk of AMD 64 bit Ubuntu. Booted it up and viola – can see 5 GB RAM and 8 CPUs !

facebook act 2 scene 1

I think facebook is maturing too fast; but that is the nature of the beast, one rolls with the momentum. Given that premise, what would next scene be ? Two thoughts:

i) Explore into next level of information maturity order.

Most probably fcebook is in 3rd order and now is the time to add context. Some candidates include the knowledge graph, skills graph, …
ii) facebook/e (facebook – Enterprise version)

It is no secret that enterprises see value in leveraging social graph ( and the derivatives there of like the knowledge graph) facebook on some form of enterprise class infrastructure as an offering would be a good sized market. An “enterprise class infrastructure” means assuring the required security,privacy, availability, extensibility/integration, multi-tenancy (if hosted in a collective farm), compliance verifiability et al. What enterprises get is an innovative infrastructure which can replace the corporate employee directory. Otherwise they will implement some form of social network with less features and will take more time. Basically a social network SaaS ! Of course, facebook should not touch rest of corporate “stuff” that hang off of an employee directory like entitlement. Once the business and technology model is defined/refined, I can see a good revenue stream for facebook. Again part of growing up ;o)

Realistically, in order not to slow down the mainstream, the facebook/e might have to be a distinct entity, still feeding off of the mainline – in some sense distinct but not separate …

Let me know what you all think … with all the smart people around this company, most probably both these are on their way …

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Corporate Blog Best Practices – A Baker’s Dozen

I was writing this list for our internal use and thought this might be a good blog material. Nothing new or earth shattering, but some horse sense ;o)

14.Do not put org announcements in blog, but do write about organization & reorg
13. Do write external facing and internal facing blogs; but be sure to know which is which !
12. Do use blog & Wikis as a channel to get input & test new ideas
11. Understand that blog is an intimate 1:1 discussion
10. Pick subjects closer to your heart & you are passionate about
9. Choose good headings
8. Be short, specific and simple
7. Select varied topics for discussions
6. Be interesting as well as controversial, but not too much
5. Be relevant and be worth the time investment required to keep reading.
4. Think of readers and their interest, questions, things they care about,…
3. Jot down ideas and expand them before blogging
2. Answer discussions (i.e. do not let any points (worth discussing) unanswered)
1. Be consistent, Be Regular

References:

Of course I am standing on the shoulders of giants.

[1] http://www.copyblogger.com/five-common-headline-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/
[2] http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/03/blog_and_wiki_b.html

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Blog Action Day

This is the day to write about the environment – The Blog Action Day. 

I know you are reading many blogs today, so i will make mine short and sweet … (Actually I got up at 4:00 AM, so am sleepy as well …)

We waste lots of resources by not recycling – paper, bottles, those amazon.com boxes, juice boxes. Closely related is the packaging. Have you noticed how many things are over packaged with lots of plastic and paper ? Again, waste of precious natural resources.

My pledge:

a) Recycle more

B) Buy things with less package

Cheers & have a nice sleep Z Z Z z z z z….

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