Practical Technology

Anyone who was ever fool enough to believe that Microsoft software was good enough to be used for a mission-critical operation had their face slapped this September when the LSE (London Stock Exchange)’s Windows-based TradElect system brought the market to a standstill for almost an entire day. While the LSE denied that the collapse was TradElect’s fault, they also refused to explain what the problem really wa. Sources at the LSE tell me to this day that the problem was with TradElect.

Since then, the CEO that brought TradElect to the LSE, Clara Furse, has left without saying why she was leaving. Sources in the City-London’s equivalent of New York City’s Wall Street–tell me that TradElect’s failure was the final straw for her tenure. The new CEO, Xavier Rolet, is reported to have immediately decided to put an end to TradElect.

TradElect runs on HP ProLiant servers running, in turn, Windows Server 2003. The TradElect software itself is a custom blend of C# and .NET programs, which was created by Microsoft and Accenture, the global consulting firm. On the back-end, it relied on Microsoft SQL Server 2000. Its goal was to maintain sub-ten millisecond response times, real-time system speeds, for stock trades.

It never, ever came close to achieving these performance goals. Worse still, the LSE’s competition, such as its main rival Chi-X with its MarketPrizm trading platform software, was able to deliver that level of performance and in general it was running rings about TradElect. Three guesses what MarketPrizm runs on and the first two don’t count. The answer is Linux.

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On July 1, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu in partnership with Eucalyptus Systems, an open-source cloud infrastructure firm, will be launching Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services.

According to sources at Canonical, Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services “is a set of new professional services to help and support users building ‘private clouds’, that is cloud infrastructures behind a corporate firewall.”

This follows up on Canonical’s technical preview of UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud) in April. an open-source system that enabled organizations to build their own clouds that can work with Amazon EC2. UEC will be incorporated into the Ubuntu Server Edition technology stack.

The idea, as it always is with cloud computing is to save organizations money by optimizing server use, while lowering costs and providing end users with self-service IT. With Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services, Canonical will help businesses build private clouds

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Sorry Opera; too bad about what happened to you, Netscape; and Internet Explorer, please, don’t make me laugh. The best Web browser on the planet is Firefox 3.5… for now.

I’ve been using Firefox since day one, and, for the most part, I’ve liked it. And, folks, since I’ve been using the Web since before there were Web browsers I know what I’m talking about.

The new Firefox is fast, filled with new features, and solid as a rock. I’ve been working with this latest update since its beta days on a pair of PCs. The first is my dependable Windows XP SP3 system, running on a was a Dell Inspiron 530S with a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor, 4GBs of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator). The other is my Fedora 11 PC. This Linux box is a Gateway GT5622 desktop with a 1.8GHz Intel Pentium E2160 dual-core CPU, 3GBs of RAM, a 400GB SATA drive, and an Intel 950 GMA.

Windows or Linux, Firefox, and its extensions worked like a charm. Unfortunately, while Firefox is back to being a fast browser, it’s not the fastest browser. First place continues to go to Google’s Chrome.

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Hulu says that it’s “free online video service that offers hit TV shows including Family Guy, 30 Rock, and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, etc.” Unless, though, you own a Sony PlayStation 3. If that’s you, you’re out of luck.

PS3 users discovered starting over the June 27th weekend that when they tried to watch a video that instead of their TV show or movie, they got the annoying message: “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience.” That didn’t go over so well with PS3 users.

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I usually have to reboot my Linux systems about once every six months. Linux is as stable as a rock. Windows, while it’s gotten better, is another story entirely. While I no longer need to reboot Windows on a daily basis, I still must reboot my Windows PC at least twice a month-one “what the heck was that” problem and Patch Tuesday. For some users, telecommunication server/carrier grade administrators in particular even twice-a-year reboots is twice a year too often and that’s where Ksplice comes in.

Ksplice, according to its developers, “enables running systems to stay secure without the disruption of re-booting. Specifically, Ksplice creates re-bootless updates that are based on traditional source code patches. These updates are as effective as traditional updates, but they can be applied seamlessly, with no downtime.”

Guess what? It works.

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