Super computer made from cluster of Apple G5’s

Video: Google Video

This video shows a cluster of 1100 Apple G5 computers at Virgina Tech. It is the 3rd most powerful super computer in the world and the least expensive system in the top 10.

Internet Explorer or Firefox ?

Video: YouTube

It would seem from this small survey, that most computer savvy people prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer. The people who use Internet Explorer seem to do so because that is all that they know.

How some major computer companies got their names

Here are some of the names you would know as the most well known computer companies in the world, but how did they get their names? See below for the answers.

Apple Computers

“It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 O’clock.”

CISCO

“It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco.”

Compaq

“This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object.”

Corel

“The name was derived from the founder’s name Dr.Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.”

Google

“The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named ‘Googol’, a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros.After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to ‘Google’ ”

Hotmail

“Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world.When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters “html” - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.”

Hewlett Packard

“Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.”

Intel

“Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ‘Moore Noyce’ but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.”

Lotus (Notes)

“Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from ‘The Lotus Position’ or ‘Padmasana’. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.”

Microsoft

“Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the ‘-’ was removed later on.”

Motorola

“Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.”

ORACLE

“Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.”

Sony

“It originated from the Latin word ’sonus’ meaning sound, and ’sonny’ a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.”

SUN

“Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.”

Yahoo!

“The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos”

Website: How computer companies got their names

Russia buys IBM Blue Gene, one of the World’s most powerful computers

Russia’s Moscow State University has recently purchased an IBM Blue Gene, one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

“This is the first time that such sophisticated technology has been exported to the former Soviet Union” according to makers IBM.

“The Blue Gene computer is capable of 27.8 trillion operations per second and is being used by the university for nanotechnology and scientific applications such as modelling the heart.”

“This agreement with IBM heralds a new era of supercomputing in Russia,” said Viktor Sadovnichiy, director of the university, in a statement. The world’s most powerful supercomputer is a Blue Gene device owned by the US Department of Energy and used at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to model the ageing of the US nuclear weapons stockpile and predict potential problems.

According to IBM, the supercomputer will be among the top 50 most powerful computers in the world.

The Moscow University paid approximately $5 million for two racks of the supercomputer, which can run 2,600 times faster than the fastest home PC.

Internal design of the Blue Gene is shown in the image below

Website: IBN Live

Customer waits 10 years for Microsoft support call

This is a funny story. A guy who calls his blog Bic’s Bickerings has a post on his blog about receiving a support call from Microsoft 10 years after the original call was placed.

Apparently the call was received at his parents place where he no longer lives.

You can read the full story on his blog at Bics Bickerings

See more news on this story at Computer World

Microsoft patents ‘Big Brother’ system

“Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.”

“The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.”

My question is “Hasn’t Microsoft been doing this sort of thing for a while now, Checking up on us? Now they wan’t to make money by selling their spy software. Checkout the full story on Times Online at the link below.

Website: Microsoft Spy Software at Times Online

Vintage Technology Ads, We’ve come a long way

I was recently looking at Wired.com and found a post on Best Vintage Technology ads. They are mostly serious ads, but somehow age has seemed to make them a little humorous, I guess it’s just funny when people talk about the latest technology of the past, it seems so archaic when compared to what we take for granted now.

Check out the sample video below.

Video: YouTube

See the rest of the selection on wired.com at the link below.

Website: Vintage technology ads on wired.com

Backing up Mozilla Thunderbird

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird as your email client then you will need to know how to backup regularly so that in case of disaster you do not lose all your messages and addresses.

So how do you do this? Well there are a couple of ways and they are not that difficult.

1. Use a utility such as MOZBACKUP

Mozbackup will automatically backup the essential files for Mozilla Thunderbird as well as Firefox. The program will not backup all files in your profile, however almost all people will only need the essential files.

Mozbackup can be found at this link, Mozbackup.jasnapaka.com

Select DOWNLOAD and then choose the INSTALL PROGRAM option to download.

Once you have the program downloaded you can double click to install it.

The program uses a wizard, so it is easy to use, just follow the prompts to setup manual or automatic backups.

You’ll just need to decide if you are putting the backup on removable drives such as a flash drive or onto rewritable CD or DVD.

2. Perform a manual backup

To backup Thunderbird manually all you need to do is make a copy of the profile folder to another location, such as a removable hard drive / flash drive or a rewritable CD or DVD.

If you are not sure how to backup to removable drives or DVD/CD, see my earlier post, How to backup your data.

So where is your data?

Windows 2000 or XP

C:\documents and settings\YOUR LOGON OR USERNAME\application data\thunderbird\profiles\profile name\

Windows 98 or ME

C:\windows\application data\thunderbird\profiles\profile name\

I suggest that you just copy the profiles folder and everything in it and you will be assured of getting everything you need if ever you have to restore due to a failure.

So thats it, as long as you get your profiles folder backed up onto a removable drive or CD/DVD regularly then you will be safe

To restore in case of a disaster all you need to do is the reverse. If a disaster has left you with a computer freshly installed with Thunderbird and none of your data then you just need to overwrite the newly installed empty profile folder with your backed up copy.