Facebook stores up to 800 pages of personal data per user account

If you live in Europe, then you have the right under a European data protection law to request a copy of all information stored about you on any given service. In the case of Facebook, you can demand such information via the Personal Data Requests form.

via Facebook stores up to 800 pages of personal data per user account | Geek.com.

Facebook is relatively new and the average person doesn’t value their privacy — thus, Facebook has been able to acquire a huge amount of personal information on each member.  Organizations might soon value privacy and see value in the data they generate,  in which case local highly available onsite (or perhaps offsite)   SANs will become a useful investment.  Associations without a central authority (i.e. Facebook) might become desirable.  It is however not feasible for an average person or small business to run their own web server.  They should, however, be in complete control over the data their web site generates.  Users of Facebook have no control over the dissemination of the data they and their connections generate.

SPARC T4 looks to be good enough to stave off defections to x86, Linux

For those who are still members of the Sparc/Solaris installed base—those who haven’t headed for x86 or Itanium already—the T4 is potentially good news. It provides a way to preserve investments in existing Solaris skills and software while getting a significant performance boost over the year-old T3. The T4 will likely stop some defections, buy Oracle time as it prepares its next generation of processor, and reduce the company’s dependence on reselling Fujitsu SPARC 64 systems to run its own database.

via SPARC T4 looks to be good enough to stave off defections to x86, Linux.

Citrix drops dependencies on Windows to boost XenServer with v6.0

“Site Recovery in previous versions was dependent on the StorageLink Gateway component which was a Windows-based separate installation,” Citrix says. “With XenServer 6.0 the StorageLink functionality is delivered as a native part of XenCenter and the Site Recovery functionality is done natively as well.”

This also allows Citrix to support replication on a greater number of storage devices.Similarly, a Windows VM requirement was removed for access to storage features like data replication, de-duplication, snapshots and cloning, while a new workload balancing tool uses a Linux-based virtual appliance “with a smaller footprint [that] replaces the Windows-based virtual appliance and eliminates the Windows licensing dependency,” Citrix said.

via Citrix drops dependencies on Windows to boost XenServer with v6.0.

Here’s an interesting comment on this article:

agrocrag | a day ago | permalink
I don’t know what all the stuff in this article means, but I have to use a thin client at work that is connected to a Citrix-based server, and it is bar none the worst computing experience I have ever had.
And another:
dal20402 | about 17 hours ago | permalink
It’s really OT for this article, but as a user subjected to XenApp, I can confirm that the user experience is horrendous. It’s pretty stable and reliable in our office, but, even running on quite good hardware with few users connected, it’s absolutely dog-slow, and feels like using a computer while suspended in a jar of molasses.If I’m doing any significant amount of work on the weekends, I’ll go into the office rather than trying to use our XenApp system from home. I save more time by not waiting for the system than I use making the commute.

Another interesting tidbit further down in the comments…

Fast forward ten years and now thin client desktops cost more than quad core workstations.

Is this true?

Texas Advanced Computing Center

When completed, Stampede will comprise several thousand Dell “Zeus” servers with each server having dual 8-core processors from the forthcoming Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 Family (formerly codenamed “Sandy Bridge-EP”) and each server with 32 gigabytes of memory. This production system will offer almost 2 petaflops of peak performance, which is double the current top system in XD, and the real performance of scientific applications will see an even greater performance boost due to the newer processor and interconnect technologies. The cluster will also include a new innovative capability: Intel® Many Integrated Core (MIC) co-processors codenamed “Knights Corner,” providing an additional 8 petaflops of performance. Intel MIC co-processors are designed to process highly parallel workloads and provide the benefits of using the most popular x86 instruction set. This will greatly simplify the task of porting and optimizing applications on Stampede to utilize the performance of both the Intel Xeon processors and Intel MIC co-processors.

via Texas Advanced Computing Center.

DOORS

rcm2 limited has considerable experience and expertise in Systems Engineering/System Integration processes, Requirements Management processes and IT tools, in particular the DOORS database from Telelogic. We have a number of DOORS licenses that are shared among our DOORS User Group for various client projects and internal consultancy as well as bespoke solutions.

via DOORS (Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements System).

Open Virtualization Alliance signs 200+ members

The rapid growth in OVA membership is a sign of KVM’s potential in emerging markets and the cloud, where open virtualization is poised to be a key technology that can help reduce costs, increase virtual machine density, and improve performance and scalability. In fact, according to a recent member survey, more than 50 percent of OVA members are focused on cloud computing.

via Open Virtualization Alliance signs 200+ members – TechSpot News.

How to build your own Linux distro

Few new distros are created from scratch, although it is possible – see the Linux From Scratch HOWTOs at www.linuxfromscratch.org if you want to try it. Apart from getting a head start, there are other reasons to hang on the coat-tails of another distro, and probably the biggest is package compatibility. Consider that there are over 18,000 free software packages considered good enough to be in Debian, and many more that aren’t on that project’s radar.

How to build your own Linux distro | TuxRadar Linux.