In Pacific NW, 1 nuclear plant is more expensive to maintain than 31 hydro-electric plants

Washington State has one nuclear power plant that is up for renewal.

Seattle Times science reporter

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RICHLAND — When Washington's only commercial nuclear-power plant applied for license renewal last year, the timing seemed charmed. Hailed as a clean alternative to carbon-belching coal and gas, atomic power was poised for a renaissance.

Operators at the Columbia Generating Station near Richland were so bullish on the technology they talked about expanding with small, modular reactors.

In another Seattletimes article discussing the cost and benefits of nuclear power, the maintenance cost is mentioned.

Looking only at operating and maintenance costs, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) puts the price at 3.6 cents per kwh. Hydropower costs about 2.8 cents per kwh.

BPA has had to boost rates — including a proposed 8 percent increase for 2012-13 — to pay for upgrades at the nuclear-power plant. According to a 2009 BPA analysis, it costs more to maintain and operate the Columbia Generating Station than all 31 of the hydropower plants in the Columbia Basin combined.

But the plant provides about 10 percent of BPA's electricity, which would have to be replaced if it were shut down.

Organizational Charts- Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Oracle, and Microsoft

Here is a post a a friend shared on some tech companies organizational Charts.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't have done any better to add humor to how companies can look.

Google's shows a complexity in the hierarchy.

Amazon has simplicity that comes from a Retailer with separate business units.

Apple shows how the world revolves around the red dot - Steve Jobs.

Facebook is different version of a flat organization.

Oracle shows the power.  the power of Oracle Legal.

And, Microsoft.  This is one way to explain business units (Windows, Office, and XBOX) survival tactics.

The complete original post is here.  But, it was more fun to break up the sections.

CA Technologies, a cloud player most don’t think about

CNET has an article about CA Technologies focus on cloud computing.  Check out this statement.

As a side note, I've always thought of CA as a place where software goes to die--an image that the company is well aware of and working to fix. I was impressed with the focus and forward-looking comments from both Fry and Debra Danielson, senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions, and I expect to see them be more aggressive about marketing their cloud-oriented products.

The article is about a discussion with Jay Fry, VP of marketing for cloud computing.

At this week's Structure conference in San Francisco, I spoke with Jay Fry, vice president of marketing for cloud computing, about what the company is doing to address the burgeoning cloud marketplace. (The company changed its name last year from CA, and before that it was Computer Associates.)

According to Fry, this year is about figuring out what customers really want--not just from CA Technologies, but from any vendor focused on the emerging cloud market. Enterprise users are trying to keep things under their control while service providers are looking to get users connected to their services. The rate and pace of cloud adoption are very different depending on the use case.

I’ve known Jay Fry since his days at Cassatt, a company CA acquired and Jay came over.  Jay is a data center guy and I’ve chatted with Jay at Gartner Data Center, Uptime Symposium, Structure, and even at a Starbuck’s when we have been able to connect our schedules when we are both in the bay area.

It is nice to see a write-up on what I have learned in my conversations with Jay.  If you haven’t thought about CA Technologies as a cloud player, you should.

Is data center infrastructure a battle ground for terrorist vs. governments?

MSNBC has news about a hacker attack on al-Qaida’s web com sites.

NBC News: Hacker attack cripples al-Qaida web communications

Digital assault is similar to one last year linked to UK government

WASHINGTON — Computer hackers shut down al-Qaida's ability to communicate its messages to the world through the Internet, interrupting the group's flow of videos and communiqués, according to a terrorism expert.

"Al-Qaida's online communications have been temporarily crippled, and it does not have a single trusted distribution channel available on the Internet," said Evan Kohlmann, of Flashpoint Global Partners, which monitors the group's communications.

This could be the action of government-sponsored hackers.

Kohlmann said the latest incident "once again appears to bear the telltale fingerprints of government-sponsored hackers."

Think about this.  Would you want to be the persons trying to repair the al-Qaida outage?  Don’t you think the hackers and others are watching who is repairing the outage.  It is hard to hide when you are repairing something that has lots of visibility.

This is like flushing out the enemy and setting a trap.  If you scare the IT staff too much they don’t repair the site which is a win as well.

Can you imagine the guys trying to figure out how to repair the sites and constantly worried a predator UAV is targeting them?

If California targets Amazon.com Subsidiaries for Sales Taxes, can AWS continue to have locations in CA?

CNET has an article about Amazon.com distancing itself from its development groups in California.

California targets Kindle lab in Amazon tax spat

by Declan McCullagh

Amazon.com said today that it's reluctantly severing ties with affiliates in California, a move that it hopes will let it continue shipping products to state residents without collecting sales taxes.

The specific subsidiaries Amazon.com is severing ties with are A9 and Lab126.

The measure says that any retailer who "through a subsidiary" has any "place of business" in California must collect sales taxes. And--surprise!--Amazon has two subsidiaries in California: A9, in Palo Alto, which works on search technology, and Cupertino-based Lab126, which designed the Kindle and is rumored to be working onmuch more.

But, what about AWS's locations in CA?  Does AWS need to severe ties with those sites as well?

Amazon's Retail business model with customers avoiding sales taxes is an issue that affects Amazon's data center locations which then affects the AWS users as the operation of AWS cannot jeopardize Amazon.com's business model.

Is AWS's Northern California data centers next on will be spun off?  Ever wonder why Reno is a big distribution center for California?  Because, it is in Nevada along with a bunch of others who don't want to be in California's tax base.