50Micron.com

Just installed Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop, upgraded from 8.04 – and I’m telling you. I think I’m home.

So far, EVERYTHING works, right out of the box. Including, with a very minor modification, my internal Sprint CDMA wireless card.

I think I posted about this before. When I ordered my (then) new Dell D620 I ordered it with an internal (mini-PCI) SprintPCS CDMA wireless card. This is a big boost for me because I *HATE* having things sticking out of my laptop when I’m using it, IE PCMCIA cards, etc.

But to date, the only operating system I could use this card with without a major amount of hassle, was Windows. And we all know how I feel about that.

So on a whim, I tried 8.10 and I have to say I’m IMPRESSED.

The only customization I had to make was to include the device specific data for the card in /etc/modprobe.d/options in order for the native usb-to-serial driver to take over.

For the faint of heart, here are the specifics.

Find the vendor and product data for the card in question – this can sometimes be trial and error, but isn’t too difficult in most cases.  (Mine was pretty straight forward.).

# lsusb

Bus 005 Device 006: ID 0b97:7762 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 SmartCard Reader
Bus 005 Device 005: ID 413c:8103 Dell Computer Corp. Wireless 350 Bluetooth
Bus 005 Device 004: ID 0b97:7761 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 1.1 Hub
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 413c:8134 Dell Computer Corp. Wireless 5 720 Sprint Mobile Broadband (EVDO Rev-A) Minicard Status Port
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp. Internal 2.0 Hub

Then add the entry to /etc/modprobe.d/options to enable the /dev/ttyUSB0 device.

# cat /etc/modprobe.d/options

…..

# usbserial mod for Sprint CDMA card.
options usbserial vendor=0x413c product=0×8134

And we’re good.

The card should automatically be detected and show up in the drop-down under the network icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.  (Or wherever you keep your network icon)

Enjoy the freedom from Microsoft’s oppression!!!!

Service Unavailable – Zero size object
The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later.

Reference #15.8e7ffea5.1233071610.2502e4

---

Powerlink has been up and down for the past few days – fun stuff.

The hilarious part is…there is a powerlink article saying how powerlink is experiencing issues. Isn’t that like sending an email out saying that email is down?

This wouldn’t be such a problem if so many products didn’t depend on the licensing portal. Forcing customers to go through this extra step does NOT make life easy on anyone involved.

A sad day for Apple. This gives me cause for concern for the health of Apple as a whole, not just the “core” (no pun intended, Steve Jobs is indeed central to Apple’s recent successes.)

Pancreatic cancer is nothing to sneeze at. It kills people – Maybe not right away, but inevitably it will. I’ve often said that Apple doesn’t seem to have a strategy for the inevitable departure of Steve Jobs, and I am maintaining that position.

I wish Mr. Jobs well… But more realistically I hope for him a painless departure.

Mr. Jobs sent this letter to his employees:

---

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

---

I doubt it actually.

From everything I’ve seen, customers aren’t using the 2 or 4 gigabit they already have – so why the sudden rush to faster and faster fibrechannel?

Mostly it’s to keep fibrechannel having the appearance of relevance in a world of 10G Ethernet and Infiniband.  While I personally view SCSI over FC as being a much more mature protocol, I guess there is always the possibility that other options will be adopted.  (I’ve done enough iSCSI implementations to know the powerful draw of cheap crap.)

My supposition is that while the upgrade to 8Gig FC will happen, it will not be a rush.  Much as the push to 4Gig from 2Gig happened – through attrition.

I’ve been consulting for a long time.  I don’t know a single customer that went out and bought new switches, new HBA’s and new storage just for the 4Gig technology.  They did it the way they all do it – when replacing hardware that was going to be upgraded anyway.

I forsee the same adoption curve with 8GBit.  It will happen because it’s a logical progression.

I would start finding a graceful way to explain to customers why they aren’t seeing a performance improvement though. (Outside of coincidentally adopting SSD at the same time)  If you’re not using all of your 4Gigabit (or even your 2Gigabit for that matter) you’re going to end up not using all of your 8Gigabit….

…even faster.