WASHINGTON (AP) - The Alaska National Guard, which Republicans are pointing to as an important national-security credential for vice presidential choice Sarah Palin, has personnel shortages that make its aviation units the most poorly staffed in the nation. Craig Campbell, the Alaska Guard's top officer, ...

Craig Barth, CEO de la société de recherches Devil Mountain, traîte IE8 bêta 2 de “porc-épique” pour faire un mauvais jeu de mots, juste ce dont Redmond avait besoin. Un scénario test a été mené sur 10 sites internet pour montrer que Firefox 3.0.1 consomme 159Mo de mémoire, IE7 250Mo, et IE 8, vous demandez-vous? Vroum vroum 380Mo de mémoire.

Pour être juste, rappelons qu’IE8 est toujours en bêta, donc pas encore fini. Mais puisqu’il s’agit de la 2e bêta publique, on peut se demander si la version finale sera tellement différente.

Les chiffres s’approchent des tests de vitesse de Lifehacker (avec Chrome). Les internautes vont-ils se toruner plus volontiers vers Firefox et Chrome? Microsoft doit se faire du soucis. [Exo.blog via Digital Daily]

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• TechRadar: Mozilla: 'Internet Explorer has been dragging Google down' ;
• RTBF: Google Chrome: réactions de Tristan Nitot (Fondation Mozilla) ;
• NetEco.com: Tristan NITOT, Mozilla : « Chrome devrait stimuler encore plus l’innovation » ;
• Mozilla: Google's not trying to kill us ;
• LePoint.fr: Google Chrome : réaction de Tristan Nitot (Mozilla) ;
• Slashdot: Mozilla's Thought On Google's Chrome ;
• Le titre qui m'a fait rire : Internet Explorer n’est plus définitivement has been, il est officiellement mort ;
• Une semaine plus tard, IE 8 bêta 2 déçoit. "selon Craig Barth, développeur chez Devil Mountain Software, la consommation de mémoire pour IE 8 bêta 2 est 52% plus élevée que pour IE7 et Mozilla Firefox." Face à Chrome, IE8 vient de prendre une claque monumentale... avant même sa sortie !
• Rigolo et flippant à la fois : Facebook Ads Target You Where It Hurts, où une jeune femme réalise à quel point la publicité ciblée est parfois gênante ;
• Happy birthday to GNU, explique le comédien Stephen Fry (qui est aussi utilisateur de Firefox) ;
• Xavier Niel (Free.fr) sort de sa réserve pour tirer à boulets rouges sur les opérateurs mobiles, et il a raison !
• Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web, avec Darin Fisher et Ben Goodger en photo (deux anciens mozilliens, sans compter Brian Ryner) ;
• Des troubles sur la licence d’utilisation de Google Chrome. Espérons que cela sera changé d'ici la version finale... Mise à jour : ca le sera.
• The Register détourne la BD de Chrome, et c'est féroce ! (via Karl, chez Embruns) ;
• Serious Security Flaw in Google Chrome, mais bon, c'est déjà résolu dans la version de Webkit utilisée par Apple dans Safari, donc ça devrait arriver rapidement dans Chrome (qui n'est qu'en Bêta pour l'instant) ;

Check out Ruby Khan's mini cross stitch inspired by and adapted from from Craig Robinson's Minipop drawings. Wow!

Here's not something you want to hear describing your latest browser: "epically porcine." Yes, that's exactly how software research firm Devil Mountain CEO Craig Barth described it. Just how bad is the bloat on the latest beta? Well, on a 10-site scenario test, Firefox 3.0.1 consumed 159MB of memory. IE7 consumed a heartier 250MB. IE 8? A whopping 380MB of memory. Yikes.

To be fair, IE8 is still in beta, which means it isn't the full release and isn't finished yet. But since it's already at the second public beta stage, one would think it'd be at least pretty close to being complete, and it'd doubtful that such drastic changes as would be necessary to cut those numbers down will come before the full release hits.

These numbers line up with the speed tests that our cousins over at Lifehacker performed (which also included Chrome). Will Microsoft reign in IE8's bloat before its full release? If not, will that push more people to Firefox and Chrome? We'll see. [Exo.blog via Digital Daily]

• The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization is putting its catalog of Broadway musical show tunes and standards up for bid. The price is in the $150 million to $200 million range. In addition to major music companies, hedge funds and private equity firms are also said to be interested in the catalog. (Reuters)

• eMusic president David Pakman is criticizing "quid pro quo" deals between record labels and ISPs that he worries could harm existing download stores. (Financial Times)

• Microsoft will release a 120MB Zune. (Zunerama)

• A profile on Songza, a music search site that pulls audio from YouTube. An upcoming version of the site will include videos. The site gets 120,000 streams per day and pays performing rights organizations -- but not labels. (Bits)

• Music Row magazine's parent company, SouthComm Communications, is launching a bi-weekly email publication called Open Source. Music Row's David M. Ross and Craig Havighurst will cover technology, media, digital politics. (Music Row)

• "Gridlock Economy," the new book by Columbia University Law School professor Michael Heller, discusses what he calls "fugutive resources" (like music) and suggests content owners will collectively grant blanket licenses except in cases where the value of the content is known. (Forbes)

• It looks like proposed copyright legislation in Canada will have to wait until it is reintroduced by a new Parliament. (National Post)

Storage server vendor 3PAR has built a key function for storage efficiency into a specialized chip, offloading that job from the main processors in a pair of server models it introduced on Tuesday.

[ Get the latest on storage developments with InfoWorld's Storage Adviser blog and Storage Report newsletter. ]

3PAR's storage servers are designed to save both storage space and IT managers' time by automatically allocating capacity across a disk array. They can either set aside a certain amount of storage for each application, as defined by the administrator, or allocate just the amount of space the application really needs.

The 3PAR Gen3 ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) can handle either task, as well as the migration between them. The chip is built into the company's new InServ T400 and T800 Storage Servers and is the first chip that can make that shift, according to 3PAR. Previously, the company's gear has done so with software. Handling such tasks in hardware typically makes them run faster.

However, customers will have to wait until the next version of the 3PAR InForm Operating System to tap into the ASIC's new capability, Nunes said. He declined to say when the new software would be available.

Like 3PAR's last ASIC, the new chip also includes 3PAR Fast RAID 5, a system for distributing data across multiple drives so it remains available in case of a failure. RAID 5 requires less overall space than RAID 1, which uses two complete copies of the data, but it runs more slowly. 3PAR's Fast RAID 5 speeds that up by putting it in hardware, Nunes said.

The T400 and T800 servers each are made up of several controllers, or blades, that communicate via a backplane in the server. The T400 can have between two and four controllers and the T800 can have as many as eight, Nunes said. In addition to the servers, 3PAR sells the disk arrays that go with them. The company builds its systems mostly from third-party components but designed the ASIC itself over the course of two or three years, he said.

3PAR's servers and storage arrays have helped Memphis financial services company Morgan Keegan make more efficient use of its storage capacity, according to Parker Mabry, vice president and manager of network systems engineering. His company uses two S400 servers, an earlier 3PAR product. With Morgan Keegan's previous storage systems, dividing up one array to serve two major applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server would have been difficult and made the drives work too hard, Mabry said. The S400s divide every drive in the array into units of 250MB that can be pooled and virtualized, which provides much more flexibility, he said.

Alibris, an online store for books and other media, changed its storage system to 3PAR in 2006, said CTO Michael Shaffer. The company has an IT staff of just four and was able to shift one member to new tasks from what was almost a full-time job managing storage, he said. Shaffer's team still assigns a certain amount of storage to each application, and 3PAR storage servers automatically distribute it across multiple disks, which allows for fast reading and writing of data, he said. Shaffer doesn't let the storage servers set the amount of capacity yet, but with the new chip, he probably could do so quickly and easily, he said. Then he could switch back if he didn't like it.

"Having the ability to change one's mind is a rare ability," Shaffer said.

The InServ T800 Storage server is priced starting at $175,000 for a base configuration with two controllers and 16 146GB drives. The T400 is priced from $130,000.

via http://www.craigatkinson.co.uk/links/art_work/abstract.html