Bruce Backa's thoughts on technology and life - News

A Breakthrough Technology

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:31:15 GMT

Every once in a while there is a breakthrough in technology that changes the character of an established paradigm. One such breakthrough has just occurred in the area of file archiving – On-demand Archiving™. On-demand Archiving dramatically increases the ROI on file system archiving by completely eliminating the need for repetitive file systems scans.

In lieu of system-wide scans, On-demand Archiving uses events to trigger the archiving process, for example, the crossing of a threshold on user home directories. As the end-user reaches certain levels of consumption, the archiving engine is automatically engaged and moves targeted files to secondary storage. This limits the consumption of primary storage and provides for continuous, high-quality service while reducing cost.

In addition, On-demand Archiving can engage the end-user directly and allow them to choose the files that are archived based on their business value and on-going relevance. Preliminary research has shown that when users are engaged in the process of choosing the disposition of their data they are more prone to delete unnecessary files. This further reduces demand and cost.

To learn more see: http://www.ntpsoftware.com/products/ODA

Microsoft Sneaks Out A Winner

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:52:10 GMT

If Microsoft made a big announcement for the release of Windows Home Server, I certainly missed it. But it looks like Microsoft has created a winner. Windows Home Server will hold all of your files, automatically backup your home workstations, stream your audio and video, and act as a remote gateway into your home network – allowing you to access both the server and your workstations from outside the house. What more could anyone want?

Today you can buy a fast terabyte hard drive for $1,000 or less and gigabyte drives for a few hundred dollars. Using Windows Home Server you can create a home network whose capacity and features rival many corporate networks.

I don’t know what it says about me that I have a 5 terabyte network at my house or that I expect to need more storage in a couple of years, but I definitely enjoy having continuous online access to everything that I have from pretty much everywhere in the world.

Beware of Vista

Tue, 01 May 2007 14:02:34 GMT

Often the lesson is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Many of us were not looking for a new Microsoft Operating system – I certainly wasn’t. But Vista is here. However, Microsoft has changed its implementation of the CIFS protocol. Vista is incompatible with all of the third-party NASes that we have tested against, from NetGear home systems to NetApp Filers.

I can’t imagine why Microsoft would do such a thing, but a lot of people who were open to Vista have since rolled back rather than change all their NASes. As of this writing, (April 2007), I have no information from Microsoft or any of the NAS vendors concerning a solution to this problem or a timeframe for releasing one.

Amazing! I suggest we all boycott Microsoft.

Beware of Microsoft Vista

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:01:02 GMT

Often the lesson is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Many of us were not looking for a new Microsoft Operating system – I certainly wasn’t. But Vista is here. However, Vista is incompatible with all of the third-party NASes that we have tested against, from NetGear home systems to NetApp Filers.

Amazing!

Today's battle ground

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 02:24:22 GMT

In case you haven't noticed, the operating system wars are pretty much over. Going forward, there will be Windows and UNIX. This means the interesting play has moved somewhere else - to the man-machine interface.

Having recognized this, last week, IBM put some of its speech technology out into the open source marketplace. This counters Microsoft's Speech Server, which up until now has been the only real pure infrastructure play in the space.

I've been a Dragon user for a few months now, and the technology is way beyond where most people think it is. The paradigm for speech interaction with your computer still needs some work, but the underlying technology probably recognizes what i'm saying better than most humans.

With digital photography it is already possible to create man-made images that cannot be distinguished from naturally occuring scenes. Pretty soon we will be able to create man-made speech that's indistinguishable as well. When that happens, it's a whole new world... Even if you don't call your bank on the phone, voice I/O is in your future. Trust me.