HERE appears to be no perfect way to protect oneself from hard-drive crashes. Physical problems, which arise time after time, are always uncalled for, so backups are the best way to prepare and become immune to disaster.

This morning I woke up to find my home computer frozen, having heard suspicious rhythmic noises coming from the box. The hard-drive was dead indeed. The ‘knuckle’ noises confirmed it. Although I have my data stored in three seapare locations, I will still need to find a replacement, then restore programs and settings. It has only been 12 months since my previous hard-drive died.

There has been a fair bit of fuss about Microsoft’s use of Open Source software. In the past few days, I have come across numerous articles describing how Windows relied on some BSD network components in the early nineties. Above all, the incorporation of Open Source software for Message Passing Interface (MPI) in their server software makes many among the Open Source community bitter.

In a move that shows just how far Microsoft Corp. has come, and how pervasive open-source software is in certain areas, the software powerhouse is, for the first time, including open-source technology in one of its shipping products.

Related item: Software Communists – referring to software patents

N previous write-ups, I was repeatedly referring to modern computers that cost no more than $300 in western countries. See, for example, Expensive Developers, Cheap Hardware or Dirt-Cheap Computers. I was also once referring to the death of commercial software due to Open Source software (OSS) and pre-loaded operating systems, wherein not much user intervation or skills are required. Plenty of software gets bundled, which makes the O/S base very self-contained. So how much cheaper can computers truly get? There was some chattering about $100 computers last year. It now turns out that Intel’s cost of chips (processors) is $40 per unit.

Published: September 13, 2005, 11:18 AM PDT

Though Pentium 4s can sell for up to $637, Intel’s average cost for making a chip comes to $40, according to a report from analysts In-Stat.

The report doesn’t consider expenses related to design or marketing…

Let us remember that inexpensive computers are a big step not only towards penetration into poor homes. This can make the difference between a business with 100 workstations or 2o0 workstations, where both options may equal in term of the total cost. IBM recently suggested that Linux TCO is 40% lower than that of Windows. As Linux continue to mature, this large gap in terms of cost should continue to increase.

One can easily identify case studies where a company greatly benefits from a saturation of low-cost machines. Google, which is a Linux ‘poster child’, can afford to distribute and operate very many servers which crawl the World Wide Web. Had it not been for OSS, where would they be? One might add the fact that OSS is significantly more effective in terms of performance once compared with alternatives. It is sometimes difficult to get those facts heard, however, as it take funds to launch a propaganda.

Skype are to be bought by eBay in a strategic move which aims to ease comminication between sellers and buyers. Perhaps it will also enable real-time voice auctions.

eBay’s chief executive said:

By combining the two leading e-commerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the net.

I sometimes get curious as to the background of some authoritative figures. Here are some interesting facts, which should not be treated as gossip, but strictly as objective facts. Bill Gates at his early days is described in an outdated mini biography, a snippet of which lies below:

His (Bill’s) great-grandfather had been a state legislator and mayor, his grandfather was the vice president of a national bank, and his father was a prominent lawyer.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, who now share a large Boeing 767 passenger plane, appear to have come from so-called “academic families”. Page’s father, Carl Victor, is a computer science professor at Michigan State University, where Larry also began his studies. Brin likewise, but it is the University of Maryland where his father Michael works on mathematics. His mother appears to have worked (possibly still does) in NASA.

The facts above make one wonder if a family of overachievers is a pre-requisite for success. I hope this is merely a coincidence that which not broadly reflect on reality. I can honestly confess that my parents were never educated at a high level. In fact, computers are known to them only at a fundamental level, e.g. Web surfing and Microsoft Word.

The display blends with the player’s body

AVE you had a peek at the new Sony Walkman, which aims to compete with Apple’s iPod? Since Apple have introduced the ultra-thin iPod nano and will soon incorporate a mobile phone, Sony appear to have fallen behind already. Their 20 GB player does not look elegant to me. Have a look, however, at how its display blends with the actual body. The white captions are part of the display, which is almost unbelievable and probably unprecedented.

HIS Wednesday I will deliver a talk to an audience of surgeons at the Royal Eye Hospital. The two short presentations gracefully run under Firefox and focus on computer security and data recovery, which are not my primary fields of expertise. Nonetheless, there is plenty of information to deliver on the subject as it is broad and open-ended. As usual, my presentations are publicised on-line (not finalised yet):

• PC Security in a Connected Environment (XHTML)
• Basics of Data Recovery (XHTML)

Please do remember that both presentation were composed with a non-technical audience in mind. They do not bog down to a low level of granularity and tend to refer to Windows more often than to other platforms, which I shall not neglect to advocate. It is by no means propaganda, but I hope to get across the message that Windows (and several applications including IE) is prone to failure and woe.