Category: Infrastructure
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New graphics engine hack risk to Firefox 4 and Chrome users
I am have not upgraded to Firefox 4 yet because I am waiting for the bugs to shake out. The Register reports a potentially serious issue. … On Tuesday, members of the US-CERT echoed the advice that WebGL be disabled. So far, neither Context nor CERT has given instructions for turning off the standard in…
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Elastic Beanstalk review
I have been doing a small scale trial of Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk. I have previously trialled Rackspace cloud. I am impressed Amazon’s with the ease of use and configuratibility. Amazon’s is very much the techies’ solution. Although Amazon Web Services console is very easy to use and a great way to get started you can…
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Networks of ships
For a long time I worked in the shipping industry. It is a facinating business that has changed our world. For many people and places the changes of the last 40 years have been delivered by networks of ships not networks of computers. The rise of Asia and the decline of the West’s industrial heartlands…
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Belkin UPS might have caused data loss
Regular readers will know that I had to totally rebuild my Windows Home Server. I now suspect that the origin of the server crash was a UPS self test. My Belkin UPS battery is totally flat and does not keep the server running. I have the self tests running but the software that comes with…
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Windows Home Server reinstall disaster – use RAID next time
I am paranoid about backups. Until this week I was very fond of Windows Home Server which is Microsoft’s backup solution for the home. You simply put it on your network and every night it backs up your household computers to a server which contains redundant disks. It is a real server and you can…
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Joy reigns with AWS CloudFormation
Amazon’s relentless drive to make infrastructure management easier continues with their announcement of AWS CloudFormation. The big problem that ordinary people (well developers and techies anyway) have with cloudy stuff is that although it is easy to start-up one server, choreographing the creation of an entire system, for example a load-balanced, three-tier system remains difficult.…
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HP rocks Microsoft with webOS PC play
I have always wondered why HP bought Palm and its WebOs. Now it makes sense to me. This is a convergence play. We have Google with Chrome/Android, Apple with Mac/Ios leaving Microsoft with the great big windows Windows and the little boy no-one wants to play with, Windows Phone. (see update below) HP rocks Redmond…
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Free cloud email – Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)
An interesting announcement from Amazon which offers a free cloudy email service (my bold). Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) (beta) Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a highly scalable and cost-effective bulk and transactional email-sending service for businesses and developers. Amazon SES eliminates the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution…
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AWS Elastic Beanstalk – free Tomcat clustering in the cloud
This came today. It is quite interesting. Scalable cloud management on Amazon. It is “free” which contrasts with other offerings. My guess is that even the most basic of cloud management offering from Amazon will do 90% of what a small app developer needs. AWS Elastic Beanstalk (beta) Easy to begin, Impossible to outgrow AWS…
Dr James Bayley 