Sun has shut the doors on its “game-changing” Rock chip.
Sun has been working on the Rock project for more than five years, hoping to create a chip with many cores that would trounce competing server chips from I.B.M. and Intel. The company has talked about Rock in the loftiest of terms and built it up as a game-changing product. In April 2007, Jonathan Schwartz, the chief executive of Sun, bragged about receiving the first test versions of Rock.
You may be trusting Linux and not even know it. You’ve used it, wether you know it or not. You may play your music on it, you may answer your phone with it. You may watch TV on it.
You may or may not know that many storage vendors use Linux under the hood.
“If you look at some of the guys who are doing storage right now, even the proprietary guys, you will find that the vast majority of them are actually using Linux as the base for their storage offerings,” he said. “And the reason they’re doing that is because there is all this stuff in place, based on the Linux kernel, and these big name vendors — IBM, NEC, Oracle with its BTRFS file system, Sun Microsystems with OpenSolaris — have a vested interest in making sure that their products continue to work in those enterprises. So they’ve completely changed their philosophy.
“They’re, like, if you can’t beat them, then join them.”
If there was any doubt about the real utility of Linux the fact that it runs on such a wide array of hardware in so many different applications. From phones to servers, storage and everything in-between. You search with it, you shop with it, you connect with it, and you get your news with it. Maybe it tells you what to do or where to go. If these examples seem trivial, how about the New York Stock Exchange?
It’s cheaper, faster, and ready to do whatever you need it to do. If it doesn’t do what you need it to do, you are free to modify it so that it does do what you need it to do. Wether or not you think this means Linux operates in the margins simply because it is less visible it is clear that Linux does a tremendous amount of work for a tremendously diverse set of businesses.
Apple is set to announce some new products tomorrow at WWDC. The keynote is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. PDT. The general consensus is that iPhone will receive an operating system upgrade, and perhaps, though less certainly, some new hardware. Since this is a developers conference, there is also an expectation that Snow Leopard will be discussed.
As an iPhone owner I hope 3.0 lives up to the hype. I’m looking forward to push notifications, cut and paste and in-app commerce.
Consumer Reports weighs in on automakers with uncertain futures.
Of course, how good a vehicle is should play a big role in any purchase decision. Currently, we don’t recommend any Chrysler, Dodge, or Jeep vehicles.
Who makes the best cars?
On average, Honda continues to make better all-around vehicles than any other automaker.