Real Time View

When it comes to cooking it’s important to have the right ingredients and for the NonStop community, HPE has all the right ingredients are at hand. And not just for one tasty treat but for many – NonStop is factoring into many more plans of HPE … I continue to be approached about my ongoing interest in NonStop systems, with my contemporaries asking me to give it a break! Surely, the industry has moved on and what once made NonStop so unique has little going for it today – industry standard solutions are so reliable, why would you pay any premium for fault tolerance, and isn’t fault tolerance essentially a waste of hardware? Redundant processors, duplicated controllers, limited application software offerings – isn’t the time of fault tolerant over? In today’s highly mobile world, where everything is low cost, why preserve with NonStop? And truly, are these ingredients still important for today’s fast-moving enterprise? At this time of year, with much cooler temperatures and snow ...

It is a rainy Friday morning and I am sitting in “Moe’s Bagel” shop, having earned my half a bagel and lox smear by walking on a treadmill and doing my 7.5 min of elliptical …Worth it! The statistics clearly lie – the unemployment stats do not explain why the gym is filled to the brim at 10 am on a Friday – and I know that many of my fellow hamsters are preparing for yet another round of resume sending while walking on treadmills - smartphones and tablets clearly at the ready. As I watched from our favorite bagel shop here in Boulder, I could see a garbage truck, green and shiny, using mechanical forks to lift two huge garbage containers, and it empties the contents into its huge belly.  It has a driver, who is also the operator. Period! I recall garbage trucks where two guys were in the back, catching a half-hazard ride, and as the truck came to a stop they would grab a garbage bin and empty it with the driver moving on to the next collection point. The two gu...

There’s an article in theguardian.com that reads like a science fiction book or the plot from a Bond movie: “Google has struck a deal with the healthcare company Johnson & Johnson to develop surgical robots that use artificial intelligence. Google’s life sciences division will work with Johnson & Johnson’s medical device company, Ethicon, to create a robotics-assisted surgical platform to help doctors in the operating theatre.” The article then ends with: “Google’s life sciences team is also developing systems that can detect cancer and heart attacks using nano particles, and has worked on smart contact lenses that contain sensors capable of monitoring the signs of diabetes – technology that was licensed by the Swiss drug firm Novartis in July 2014 to develop into a practical medical application.”   The link to this article is here: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/27/google-johnson-and-johnson-artificial-intelligence-surgical-robots There is more...

Influenced by the recent post of Margo Holen, the Internet of Things certainly is attracting more than its fair share of the media spotlight. However, it’s also fair to say that with more and more things communicating, your primary systems just can’t fail! For true car racing enthusiasts, including those who still harbor hopes of becoming a world champion, Racer is the must-read magazine each month. It provides not just in-depth analysis but pages of data about team and driver performances. And oh yes, the pictures look really cool, too. Margo and I are about to start our eighth year of High-Performance Driver Education (HPDE) track outings across the western states of America and, while using the word race remains taboo, we are on track at least four times a day for 20 – 25 minute “sessions”. Having said this, we are amateur enthusiasts at best and only on a good day. The picture above comes from the very first post of June 6, 2008, to our social blog, Buckle-Up-Travel, Off t...

It is not my thing, really, to join strangers for dinner – I tried a couple of times and did not want any part of it.   Yet, when my financial advisor sent me an invitation to the annual client conference to be held at Four Seasons Hotel in Denver, where the topic would be Rise of the Machines, after reading the description it was clear we should not miss it. “A new wave of disruptive innovation is upon us. Intelligent machines – from driverless cars and commercial drones to medical robots – have advanced enormously in sophistication, and falling prices make them increasingly accessible, the promotion said. “Join us to hear what we think they will mean for the markets, the economy, and your portfolio.” I sent a RSVP promptly to let them know Richard and I were in! The IoT buzz started some 18 – 24 months ago, riding on the cattails of the Big Data. Of course IoT in reality is way older, as we all became aware when the plane that wasn’t found yet was sending engine informatio...