Mainframes, Mini's, Servers, and Mobiles Oh My, Journey through Computer Development

Taking a journey through technology world can be scary to many, causing users to panic.  In the beginning users couldn’t get to mainframes or mini’s.  Millions of servers exposed many more users to the scary use of technology.  Mobiles is in the hands of billions.

Dileep Bhandarkar gave a presentation at the Computer History Museum on Aug 21, 2014.  Dileep’s slide deck is here.

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As a product developer you may think you don’t need to be scared.  Well there were wars going on fighting for survival.  Below Dileep covered the RISC vs. CISC wars.

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And Intel won the battle with the RISC killer chip.

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One of the more peaceful battles was the fight for energy efficiency.  The path of clock rate was consuming too many watts.

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Dileep covered the Data Center as a computer where the battle was/is between Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

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One overall theme in Dileep’s talk is how volume was behind so many of the wins.  And Mobile has the highest volumes now.

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7.7% of LinkedIn Contacts work at Microsoft, 8 Years Ago I left and connected to so many more

Last night our family got together with two other families who we ski a lot with and each of us have a kid who ski together all the time, and they spend time together off the mountain as well.

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It’s pretty hard to recognize people unless you are familiar with their clothes, so it is nice when you can see people’s faces.

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One of the parents mentioned how so many of his LinkedIn contacts are other Microsoft employees.  Turns out both of the dads are at Microsoft.  I didn’t work with either of them when I was at the company, and we talk about so many other things than Microsoft.  The one thing one dad said being an executive is he gets LinkedIn requests so much from Microsoft employees after a while his LinkedIn looks like a Microsoft Directory.

Out of curiosity I wondered what % of my contacts are current and ex-Microsoft employees.  I worked there 14 years (1992-2006), and live in Redmond so Microsoft would be highest.  Adding it up 7.7% of my 944 connections have Microsoft as the company. Next in size of contacts is Gigaom, Google, Apple, and Schneider Electric.  I can understand Gigaom.  What was interesting to see that I had more connections at Google (didn’t work at) than I do at Apple (worked at 1985-1992).  The low Apple count could be leaving Apple to go to Microsoft is not a popular thing to do.  :-)

It’s been 8 years since I left Microsoft and it was good to see that my Microsoft contacts are less than 10% of my LinkedIn profile given I spent 14 years there and live in Redmond.

What did make sense is 20.6% of my connections are in the Seattle Area which is #2.  #1 for where my connections live is SF Bay Area with 20.8%.  Well that is basically a tie and make sense given I spend so much time in the bay area and so much of my work is related to clients in the bay area.  Some people see me so often they think I live in the bay area which I did do from 1960-1992.

Day of Pi, March 14 - 3.14

I loved math when I was a kid and memorizing Pi out to 50 digits was a class exercise.  Today Mar 14, 2013 is a day to celebrate Pi.  3.14.  March 14.

SJMercury has the activities for local bay area kids.

Bay Area math enthusiasts to celebrate Pi Day

Bay City News Service

Posted:   03/14/2013 07:15:25 AM PDT
Updated:   03/14/2013 07:15:32 AM PDT

 

 
 

Numerical celebrations are planned throughout the Bay Area for the mathematical Pi Day on Thursday.

Pi Day is celebrated on the 14th day of the third month, which aligns with the first three digits of pi, 3.14, which is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

Pi is an unending number, which has inspired several challenges including events at San Francisco's Mission and Washington high schools.

Students at a math class at Mission High School, located at 3750 18th St., will have a contest to see who can recite the most digits of pi, while another class at Washington High, located at 600 32nd Ave., will also have a Pi recitation contest -- all while eating plenty of pie, San Francisco school officials said.

Google has a Chrome hacking contest where the reward is $3.14159 Million.

Google Offers $3.14159 Million in Hacking Prizes

By Ben Weitzenkorn, TechNewsDaily Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – Fri, Feb 1, 2013
 

Whoever successfully cracks Google's Chrome operating system at this year's Pwnium hacking contest will walk away with a piece of the pi.

Google, which had previously offered totals of $1 million, then $2 million, in prizes for successful hacks, is upping the ante at the contest, to be held in March at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, B.C. The company is offering a total of $3.14159 million in cash rewards.

That's a nod to pi, math's most intriguing irrational number, and to the added challenges that come with cracking Google's ever-improving security measures.

It's unlikely that any single hacker will get the whole pi. Instead, many contestants could win $110,000 for each temporary compromise of Chrome OS, or $150,000 for each compromise that survives a system reboot.

Not even thinking about it I bought Life of PI in 3D yesterday and watched it.

Still, “Life of Pi” is spellbinding while it lasts. Lee’s film can be appreciated as many things -- a post-Darwinian meditation on coexistence as the key to survival, a reflection on the spiritual nature of suffering and transcendence, a beguiling bait-and-switch on the vagaries of belief itself.

Mostly, though, “Life of Pi” is a trip -- in every transporting, liberating, mind-bending sense of the word.