An Age of Magic

Do people save money anymore?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I wonder what our grandparents, and even our great-grandparents, make of the current financial climate. After all they were probably the last generation of humans who bought things like cars and houses with cash rather than the Car Loans that everyone opts for nowadays.

The saved and then bought; today we save but usually towards a deposit on what it is we wish to buy. For the larger purchases that is. For the smaller things in life, such as furniture and holidays, the way to go is through Personal Loans. This is not a growing trend as such, but rather the established way.

Popularity: 59% [?]

Could there be two earths out there?

Another Earth could be orbiting one of the Sun’s closest stellar neighbours.  Habitable rocky planets are likely to have formed in the Alpha Centauri system, a trio of stars 4.37 light years, or 25.8 trillion miles, away. And Astronomers are saying  if such worlds exist they could be detected using a dedicated telescope.

This could be great news for the human race to know that if we destroy this planet any further we might have alternative to go to.  Because it is so close, Alpha Centauri would probably be the first star system to be visited if interstellar travel ever becomes possible - a fact that has inspired numerous science fiction stories.  The three stars in the system are binary twins Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B and the much smaller and dimmer red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, which is a little nearer the Earth.

Anyone standing on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B would see two “suns” in the sky, a bright “primary” sun and a “secondary” sun which would be much weaker but still many times brighter than the full moon as seen from Earth.  Although Proxima Centauri is considered part of the same star system it is 0.21 light years from the other stars, or 13,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It would only be visible at night.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Temperature Alert

If you work in the IT industry today then you will be wanting to keep right up to date with all the new specifications such as Temperature@lert.  This has recently been accepted by the industry as the only SPEC Power compliant service and the ONLY one available with 64-bit drivers.

Read on for more vital information…
SPECpower_ssj2008 is the latest installment of an IT industry benchmark evaluates the power and performance characteristics in larger volume server class computers. It was created out of a need to monitor and regroup energy use from the IT industry and computer manufactures around the world.

SPECpower_ssj2008 does not only measure AC power from the source but it delivers a calibrated matrix for all computer functions including ambient temperature. There are two temperature measuring tools that are compatible with SPECpower_ssj2008 and the only one with support for 64-bit drivers is Temperarture@lert.

With the combination of the SPECpower_ssj2008 and Temperature@lert system administrators can run both temperature and power controls. The SPECpower_ssj2008 measures power for the AC input and combines the implementation to a performance metric. This provides pertinent information about what power considerations are made when considering which data center. Coupled with Temperature@lert, the power and temperature gradient works in symbiotic form to provide the best accuracy available in the IT industry.

We’d like to extend a special thanks to Greg D. and his team at Dell Inc. whose deep knowledge and expertise made this possible.

For more information about SPECpower_ssj2008 visit: http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/

Popularity: 53% [?]