April 3rd 2008
After me banging on for a year about how cool ZFS is, my boss is finally convinced and wants to get a Thumper (or 2). Depending on budgetary constraints we may be getting a couple of these to implement a warm backup solution for our current data and about 5 years worth from now (they are 24Tb each)
48 Drives in a 4U rackmount for 20k, great value and unbeatable storage density.
November 16th 2007
If you have not seen it, go and checkout the OLPC project. Technologically it is superb: The screen is revolutionary, having two display modes (a 800×600 colour display mode and a 1200×900, 200DPI black and white mode that can be used in direct sunlight). The wireless networking can create a mesh to connect children and share any internet access between them all. All the software is Free (as in freedom). You can get hold of one now using give one get one.
I know this will not solve all of the worlds problems, people who have no food to eat or are in a war zone will not benefit from having a neat little laptop. OLPC is not simply a charity project, it is made to be useful to children and low cost (governments all over the world are signed up to buy them). Education can make a real difference to a society once the basic necessities are met.
I saw on the TED blog a talk by Andrew Mwenda on why aid is not the answer to problems in Africa, economic growth is. I agree, particularly after seeing the wonderful presentations by Hans Rosling (first , second) also at TED. Please do watch these as they are inspiring and really show the power of good data to shed light rather than heat on complex situations. Go play with the data yourself at gapminder.org .