Today LaCie announced the Rugged RAID mobile drive featuring user selectable RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration.  The new drive featuring Seagate hard drives will be available later this quarter.

The Rugged RAID mobile drive is a drive featuring two hard drives that can be put in RAID 0 for speed or RAID 1 for data redundancy.  RAID 0 uses two drives to store one piece of data, allowing it to read and write faster by storing half of it on both drives to form the single piece of data.  RAID 0 is much faster than a single hard drive (by about 2x) while being less secure for data since if one drive goes then the data is gone.  On the other hand RAID 1 stores the same data on two hard drives so that if one of them were to ever fail you will still have the data on the other.  This is a much more secure way to store sensitive data that is important for a user to protect.

The Rugged is exactly what it is called, rugged and that is thanks to its design.  The drive is resistant to shock, with it being able to withstand drops of up to 1.5m (about 5 feet) and 1 ton of pressure.  It is also resistant to water with its cap in place, and when it is the drive is IP 54 rated.  That IP 54 rating means that the drive is dust tight and will withstand splashes of water on the drive.  The drive also features USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connectivity, which means that users will be able to use RAID 0 to its fullest.  The drive in RAID 0 will be able to get up to 240MB/s sustain performance.  The drive is compatible with all operating systems and it also includes LaCie Private-Public software.  The software enables users to password protect the entire device or just certain volumes with AES-256 encryption.

The LaCie Rugged RAID will be available in 4TB capacity with a MSRP of $449.99 later this quarter from LaCie’s online store and authorized LaCie resellers.  The drive will carry a three-year limited warranty that users can extend or upgrade.  The warranty provides worldwide repair and/or replacement, so this drive is ready for your adventures around the world.

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When Groupon decided to launch a new product with the name of Gnome they either forgot to check if it was already a registered trademark, or simply didn’t care that it already was.  The “GNOME” has been a registered trademark since 2008, and has been known a known name in software for the last 17 years.

The GNOME Foundation recently found itself in an odd situation when Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) decided to roll out a new tablet based point of sale solution for merchants.  Groupon somehow came up with the name of GNOME for the products. For the last 17 years GNOME been a name known in software, as it has been a desktop environment environment for GNU/Linum and BSD operating systems.  This has been a staple for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distrobutions.  It is also the go to the desktop environment for many other distros.  With the recognition that it had, it is surprising that nobody thought there was a problem before Groupon made 28 trademark applications even with a simple web search.

The GNOME Foundation reached out to Gropon to request that they pick another name.  The reasoning behind that was that Groupon was trying to use the name on something so closely related to the GNOME desktop and its technology.  Groupon refused to reconsider the name, and even filed more trademark applications after they received the request.  So the foundation decided to file formal proceedings to oppose 10 of the trademark applications by December 3rd 2014.  They also made an appeal to the public to help raise funds to fight Groupon, as its counsel advised them it would need $80,00 to do so,  This is a bit like David taking on Goliath as the foundation is a non-profit and Groupon is a multi-billion dollar company.  The foundation raised $87,693.47  to cover its costs.

When the media picked up on this after the foundation made the appeal, they gained a lot of support.  They received so much that Groupon backed down and abandoned all of the 28 pending trademark applications.  This was confirmed after the foundation made an update to its website where it made the appeal to the public.  Groupon has agreed to change the name of its new product, and the foundation thanks its supporters for this outcome.  This is just another gleaming example of the little guy standing up for itself and winning.

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Due to the efforts made by both Netflix and Canonical, Chrome version 37 is now able to stream Netflix.  This is a great thing as there haven’t been many options for legally watching protected media on Linux.

Today, with the release of Google Chrome version 37 everyone has the ability to stream Netflix through the browser.  Many have reported that the newest version of Chrome with Netflix “just works”, making things very simple.  You have Netflix and Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu to thank for giving everyone the ability to binge on Netlfiz with Linux.  Unfortunately, it is only for Chrome and will not work for users of the upstream project Chromium(Which is what Chrome is based off of).  Netflix streaming has been confirmed on Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint.  Though it should work on all Linux distros.  The one requirement, is that the Network Security Service (nss)  libraries must be up to date.  This is because Chrome depends on that library to make the streaming functional.

Making Netflix streaming happen, is also ushering in a wave of legal movie and tv watching.  The thing is that watching DVD has mostly been  illegal on Linux with the most common methods of playback.  The copy protection on most DVDs uses CSS, or Content Scramble System.  Companies that make physical playback devices and software license CSS support from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA).  Someone was able to reverse engineer the protection scheme and make DeCCC which decrypts the CSS encryption.  libdvdcss has also is able to use the brute force method to break the CSS encryption. So that means the most common ways to playback movies and copy protected media is in fact illegal.  This is because under DMCA and similar laws this is illegal.  There have been legal player software such as Fluendo DVD Player that licenses the CSS support.

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A new game to enliven your summer vacation developed by Cuve Games and put out by Phoenix Online Publishing is one month from delivery. Heroes and Legends: Conquerors of Kolhar blends combat and strategies with story-driven and randomly generated adventures in fantasy role playing game (RPG) fun.

Evil lurks in Kohlar

Gamers will custom make their own weapons and armor to be used by their warriors, wizards and assassins. Fire and ice complete the arsenal for battling more than 130 monsters in an attempt to overcome an ancient evil. Scenarios become more and more challenging to be met with collected mystical artifacts that enhance your ability to win.

Jerome Bodin, game designer and owner of Cuve Games claims: “Challenges will appeal to the older hardcore as much as to the newcomers.” Jerome, self-proclaimed tinkerer, says he and his partner Fred, the arts and graphics guy, work out of their “small independent studio somewhere in France.”

Silver Lining Cast

An initial offering from Phoenix Publishing Online, an independent video game publisher, grew out of the Kings Quest series from Sierra Entertainment. Originating in 1984, the series was the very beginnings of the graphic adventure game genre. The concept has continued in several episodes of The Silver Lining which debuted in 2010 from from Phoenix Publishing.

Erica Reed, FBI, stars in Cognition

Another early title, Cognition, features Erica Reed an FBI agent who can see into the past in a point and click game funded by Kickstarter in 2012 and developed cross platform for Windows, Mac, and iOS. There are 24 videos about the episodes on YouTube. TGN (Those Gaming Nerds) gave Episode One a good review while Adventure Gamers gave the fourth episode low marks saying “The Cain Killer, the fourth and final episode in the series, is best described as a strangely dull thud of a climax that generally abandons intuition and reasoning in favor of blunt melodrama.”

Finding the Lost Civilization

Lost Civilization released in early 2014 by Phoenix requires puzzle solving to rescue a kidnapped fiancé. This archaeological adventure that takes you into the Mayan civilization sells for $6.99 to GameHouse members. TouchArcade gave it three stars.

April 2014 saw the company’s paranormal mystery adventure game Moebius: Empire Rising written by Jane Jensen and releasedfor both PC and Mac. It was followed by Quest for Infamy, a humorous role playing game with customizable spells. Players must lie, cheat, and steal to win. You can get it for PC and Linux.

August 21 brings the latest offering, Heroes and Legends: Conquerors of Kolhar  to the marketplace for PC, MAC, and Linux. It will be available via Steam, the Phoenix Online Store, and the usual major online retailers.

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Apparently the IRS has taken the stance that Open Source projects, that are either created through the collaborations of individuals or corporations (which the government increasingly considers people) are not eligible for non-profit status. This news comes as the OpenStack foundation and Yorba foundation have both recently been denied by the IRS for non-profit status.

While it may be true that some open source projects may not necessarily be deserving of non-profit status, most of these projects are run by a community of people and/or companies that come together for a common cause. They also make most of their software free and open to the public which is almost the perfect definition of doing a public good. Not only that, but most open source foundations generally accept contributions from the public, individuals and corporations that are willing to cooperate for that specific cause.

When you consider how many private individuals donate their own money and time to non-profits as it is already it doesn’t necessarily seem outrageous to think that open source projects should be able to as well. In fact, considering how many open source projects currently drive the world as we know it, it would be a real shame if they were all forced to be for-profit even when it isn’t inherently in their business model.

Hopefully these open source projects will be able to find a way to convince the IRS to allow them to operate as non-profits because a lot of people donate money and time to these projects in order to keep them as open as possible. After all, charging for an open source project’s products just seems ridiculous and they can’t be called ‘donations’ if you actually have to pay for them because they’re now forced to be for-profit. It just seems utterly ridiculous and maybe the IRS needs to better understand how open source works in order to understand why they have to remain non-profit.

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Last week ARM invited a group of journalists and analysts to Austin Texas to hear about their server, mobile, and wearable developments. ARM and their partners presented in-depth explanations of their version of the ARM architecture.

On the first day of the conference, HP’s Dwight Barron gave an overview of their Moonshot system.  They have been refining the specifications since its late 2009 inauguration.

Moonshot’s design differs from the traditional servers which have been the general-purpose workhorses of the data center. These boxes have proved to be jacks-of-all-trades, able to run operations for organizations of every shape and size. They started with proprietary operating systems and a warehouse sized room with less computing power than today’s smartphones. In the past, one could choose from several operating systems and server architectures. Today, operating system options are limited and most run on the Intel x86 architecture.

Barron explained that the cloud and mobile applications have changed the assumptions of traditional IT departments. Now IT has to balance rack space density, power consumption, thermal efficiency, and costs. Power is one of the major controlling factors in the data center.

The cloud uses more power than Japan.

The microserver SoC (System on a Chip) typically has a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 15 to 20 Watts or below, compared to 90 plus Watts for a high-end server. The microserver chassis has the circuitry related to networking, storage, and cluster communications along with integrated cooling and power supply. Thus, the shared resources reduce the complexity of the overall design.

Barron showed a typical dual processor, HPC server motherboard versus the SoC based Server motherboard. The dual processor general purpose motherboard requires system RAM for the processors, dual GPU’s with their RAM as well as the overhead of a PCIe switch, storage controller, and NICs. Each of those separate chipsets consumes power and creates heat. The SoC server motherboard starts with an integrated die having all those features in silicon, which greatly reduces required power and significantly decreases heat. The SoC cartridge and the Moonshot integration will reduce the latency of the wires between the traditional HPC server’s sub-systems.

New era app focused silicon

To prove that Moonshot is a viable approach, HP put in a production configuration. At the HP.COM website there are approximately 100 applications for browsing and downloads. HP.COM’s website gets approximately 300 million hits per day. It was running on 46 HP legacy servers consuming just over 115,000 Watts per day. Replacing that legacy configuration with six Moonshot systems lowered the power consumption to 6,000 Watts and reduced the rack space usage by 89 percent.

HP 300m hits 94% less power

Barron gave a lengthy explanation of why mobile users and cloud services require application focused silicon for the servers. HP will offer server cartridges from multiple vendors – AMD, Applied Micro, Intel, and Texas Instruments. Applied Micro and Texas Instruments are based on the ARM architecture. This provides customers with the option of picking a server cartridge tailored for specific services, like High Performance Computing (HPC), gaming, telecommunications, finance, seismic imaging, Big Data analysis, web serving, and video analysis, to name a few.

TI  has developed hybrid ARM processors that mix anywhere from one to four Cortex-A15 (32-bit) cores with one to eight TMS320C66x digital signal processors into a single SoC. These combinations in the Moonshot can be used in application specific work such as pure cloud infrastructure workloads – servers, switches, routers, network control planes, and telecommunication switches with applications such as VoIP and LTE.

Applied Micro’s X-Gene 1 eight core SoC with ECC (error-correcting code) memory. The platform is capable of running a full LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) software stack. The X-Gene implements the ARMv8 ISA which is a full 64-bit architecture that is backwards compatible with 32-bit ARMv7. The CPU features hardware virtualization acceleration, MMU virtualization, and advanced SIMD instructions.

Barron said that ARM architecture and HP’s Moonshot will bring new performance levels and reduced power consumption to the data centers.

There was an interesting announcement in last Friday’s Digitimes. “Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) and Hewlett-Packard (HP) will establish a joint venture specifically for producing servers for cloud computing and offering related supporting services, according to Foxconn.”
“The partnership reflects innovation in HP’s server business model through combining Foxconn’s R&D capability and manufacturing expertise, with HP’s market leadership in cloud computing products and related services to enable both companies to offer cloud computing solutions which will change existing market game-playing rules, HP CEO Meg Whitman said.”

Paul Teich, CTO and Senior Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy, said, “HP and Foxconn’s partnership should help both of them address substantial challenges in continuing cloud computing R&D investment in spite of purchasing pressures that might lead to a ‘race to the bottom’ for prices and margins.”

BSN is planning a hands-on evaluation of the performance of an HP Moonshot with the Applied Micro X-gene cartridge. We will let you know the results as we did with our May 2011 comparison of ARM to x86.

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