Animoto’s Facebook scale-up « RightScale Blog

Animoto’s Facebook scale-up « RightScale Blog: "The Animoto guys did hit the jackpot on Facebook this past week. Jeff Barr mentioned a few of the stats on his blog: Animoto ramped from 25,000 users to 250,000 users in three days, signing up 20,000 new users per hour at peak."

Animoto’s Facebook scale-up « RightScale Blog

Animoto’s Facebook scale-up « RightScale Blog: "The Animoto guys did hit the jackpot on Facebook this past week. Jeff Barr mentioned a few of the stats on his blog: Animoto ramped from 25,000 users to 250,000 users in three days, signing up 20,000 new users per hour at peak."

UCI Working Group Signup - Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) | Google Groups

UCI Working Group Signup - Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) | Google Groups: "In this vision for a unified cloud interface the use of the resource description framework (RDF) or something similar would be an ideal method to describe our semantic cloud data model (taxonomy & ontology). The benefit to an RDF based ontology languages is they act as general method for the conceptual description or modeling of information that is implemented by web resources. These web resources could just as easily be 'cloud resources' or API's. This approach may also allow us to easily take an RDF -based cloud data model and use it within other ontology languages or web services making it both platform and vendor agnostic. Using this approach we're not so much defining how, but instead describing what."

OGF DRMAA Working Group

OGF DRMAA Working Group: "Develop an API specification for the submission and control of jobs to one or more Distributed Resource Management (DRM) systems. The scope of this specification is all the high level functionality which is necessary for an application to consign a job to a DRM system including common operations on jobs like termination or suspension. The objective is to facilitate the direct interfacing of applications to today's DRM systems by application's builders, portal builders, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)."

Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) | Google Groups

Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) | Google Groups: "The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum i"

Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) | Google Groups

Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) | Google Groups: "The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum i"

Creating a Common Cloud Computing Reference API or Standard - Part One | ORACLE DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL

Creating a Common Cloud Computing Reference API or Standard - Part One | ORACLE DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL: "* Monitoring and System Metrics
One of the best aspects of using cloud technology is the ability to scale applications in tandem to the underlying infrastructure and the demands placed on it. Rather then just scaling on system load, users should have the ability to selectively scale on other metrics such as response time, network throughput or other metrics made available. Having a uniform way to interact with system metrics will enable cloud providers and consumers a common way to scale applications"

Joyeur: Cloud Nine: Specification for a Cloud Computer. A Call to Action.

Joyeur: Cloud Nine: Specification for a Cloud Computer. A Call to Action.: "JoyentHome Products Services Developers Partners Support News & Events Weblog Login Joyeur: Joyent's weblog Search


Cloud Nine: Specification for"

Application Automation for Web Hosts, Load-Balancing, SaaS, and Clouds

Application Automation for Web Hosts, Load-Balancing, SaaS, and Clouds: "NGASI AppServer Manager automates
multiple installations and
configurations for Tomcat,Jetty,
Glassfish, Oracle-OC4J,and JBoss on
a single server machine, across multiple
VPS, and across multiple servers."

CDs Say 3-D Fizzled on Game Day

CDs Say 3-D Fizzled on Game Day: "It felt like a gimmick to me"

IBM And Juniper Networks Hoping To Gain Cloud Computing Market Share

IBM And Juniper Networks Hoping To Gain Cloud Computing Market Share: "IBM, through its Blue Cloud Initiative, is rolling out a number of new cloud computing solutions for enterprise users, including joint Juniper Networks and IBM or businesses to install hybrid public-private cloud capabilities across IBM’s 13 “Cloud Labs” spread across the world. The companies have created technology that would allows enterprises to extend their private clouds to remote servers in a secure public cloud at the click of a button. Once the technology is installed in the Cloud Labs, businesses can easily switch clients workloads when resources become constrained."

The cloud-SOA connection | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2009-02-10 | By Paul Krill

The cloud-SOA connection | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2009-02-10 | By Paul Krill: "Cloud computing is a deployment architecture, not an architectural approach for how [to] architect your enterprise IT [as SOA is]"

One Sentence archive - tag: "humor"

One Sentence archive - tag: "humor": "I think I've been making smart enough decisions so far, considering that my future self hasn't traveled back in time and beaten the crap out of me."

One Sentence archive - Most Popular from the Last 30 Days

One Sentence archive - Most Popular from the Last 30 Days: "It took the internet to find out about my uncle's successful career in porn."

Microsoft's Windows Azure Strategy Defined

Microsoft's Windows Azure Strategy Defined: "Microsoft said Azure eliminates the need for deploying a major server infrastructure. This could prove to be especially valuable in today's cash-strapped scenarios where start-ups may not have the money to build out a new datacenter to host new applications."

Eulogy for a benchmark : The Observation Deck

Eulogy for a benchmark : The Observation Deck: "And amazingly, in the update to SPEC SFS -- SPEC SFS 2008 -- the benchmark's flaws have not only gone unaddressed, they have metastasized. The result is such a deformed monstrosity that -- like the index case of some horrific new pathogen -- its only remaining utility lies on the autopsy table: by dissecting SPEC SFS and understanding how it has failed, we can seek to understand deeper truths about benchmarks and their failure modes."

Welcome to IEEE Xplore 2.0: Micropayments: An idea whose time has passed twice?

Welcome to IEEE Xplore 2.0: Micropayments: An idea whose time has passed twice?: "Micropayments: An idea whose time has passed twice?"

Compound Win32 Synchronization Objects

Compound Win32 Synchronization Objects: "Multithreading is a little bit like Zen Buddhism: The more you learn about it, the more it escapes you"

Enomaly: An Open Source Cloud For the Enterprise

Enomaly: An Open Source Cloud For the Enterprise: "Enomaly is trying to sell big business on its open-source cloud management and provisioning software by renaming it and packaging it with enterprise-level support, a model popularized by Red Hat."

Software could save organizations $19,000 each month

Software could save organizations $19,000 each month: "Systems experts have developed new software called PowerDown, which works by automatically shutting computers down if left unused for half an hour."

Cisco Unveils Energy-Savings Technology

Cisco Unveils Energy-Savings Technology: "By having the network as the common platform that integrates with building controllers, you can collect power information and push down power policies to devices,” said William Choe, director of the Cisco business unit that created EnergyWise."

Virtual Distributed Ethernet

Virtual Distributed Ethernet: "VDE is an ethernet compliant virtual network that can be spawned over a set of physical computer over the Internet.
VDE implements a virtual ethernet in all its aspects, virtual switches, virtual cables. A VDE can be used to create a VPN. VDE interconnects real computers running Linux, Free-BSD, MacOSX kernels (through a tap interface), virtual machines (qemu, kvm, user-mode linux, pearpc, gxemul...) as well as the other Virtual Square components like ViewOS implementations (UMview/Kmview) and Lwipv6"

People Over Process » Know Your Cloud Consumer: ISV or Enterprise? - Cloud Conference Week, Part 3

People Over Process » Know Your Cloud Consumer: ISV or Enterprise? - Cloud Conference Week, Part 3: "Benefits for ISVs
If you’re an ISV - someone writing software to sell to others, not use yourself - you’re going to run your software on a cloud, using the SaaS business model. (Throw in re-sellers and The Channel here a la Jamcracker, OpSource, &co. for some angels on a needle-head nuance.)"

Dr. Dobb's | Software Development In the Cloud | January 15, 2009

Dr. Dobb's | Software Development In the Cloud | January 15, 2009: "CUBiT management features include visibility of all system resources within cloud, auditing, capacity monitoring, role-based access, and accounting with charge back"

Microsoft unveils Windows 7 SKU lineup

Microsoft unveils Windows 7 SKU lineup: "These are the key features by SKU:

Windows 7 Starter: up to 3 concurrent applications, ability to join a Home Group, improved taskbar and JumpLists;

Windows 7 Home Basic: unlimited applications, live thumbnail previews & enhanced visual experience, advanced networking support (ad-hoc wireless networks and internet connection sharing), and Mobility Center;

Windows 7 Home Premium: Aero Glass & advanced windows navigation, improved media format support, enhancements to Windows Media Center and media streaming, including Play To, and multi-touch and improved handwriting recognition;

Windows 7 Professional: ability to join a managed network with Domain Join, data protection with advanced network backup and Encrypting File System, and print to the right printer at home or work with Location Aware Printing;

Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate: bitLocker data protection on internal and external drives, DirectAccess for seamless connectivity to corporate networks based on Windows Server 2008 R2, BranchCache support when on networks based on Windows Server 2008 R2, and lock unauthorized software from running with AppLocker."

» VMware launches open source virtual desktop software; Assessing the fallout | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

» VMware launches open source virtual desktop software; Assessing the fallout | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: "VMware on Tuesday launched an open source client for virtual desktops in a move that mixes a little bit of offense and defense.
In a statement, the company said its VMware View Open Client would allow compnaies to host virtualized desktops in the data center. Users would be able to access their desktops from any device."

Invisible Worlds ``BEEP`` Technology Ratified by IETF; BEEP Becomes a Standard for New Internet Applications. - Free Online Library

Invisible Worlds ``BEEP`` Technology Ratified by IETF; BEEP Becomes a Standard for New Internet Applications. - Free Online Library: "With BEEP, Invisible Worlds has delivered one of the quantum enablers for new applications on the Internet,' said Dr. Marshall Rose, general manager of Invisible Worlds and chief designer of BEEP technology. 'The IETF standardization of BEEP will enable these applications and services to interoperate over the Internet seamlessly. Using BEEP, Internet applications will become smarter, faster, and more effective than before.'"

The Business Case For An Internet Refrigerator - Startup City Blog - InformationWeek

The Business Case For An Internet Refrigerator - Startup City Blog - InformationWeek: "Internet refrigerators were a joke a few years ago"

Science Centric | News | How does a dog walk? Surprisingly, many of us don't really know

Science Centric | News | How does a dog walk? Surprisingly, many of us don't really know: "It turns out that all four-legged animals step with their left hind leg followed by their left foreleg. Then they step with their right hind leg followed by the right foreleg, and so on. Animals differ from one another only in the timing of that stepping"

SANS Institute - CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors

SANS Institute - CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors: "the consensus list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors that lead to security bugs and that enable cyber espionage and cyber crime."

Techworld.com - The downside of the cloud

Techworld.com - The downside of the cloud: "Saving work and expense is a key reason why cloud services are expected to grow in the next few years. Last year, 4 percent of worldwide IT spending went to cloud services, and by 2012 that figure will be 9 percent, according to research company IDC. Because of its cost and space requirements, data storage is a prime candidate for using cloud technology, and IDC predicts storage will grow from 8 percent to 13 percent of cloud spending in that same period."

SLA@SOI

SLA@SOI: "our project is committed to research, engineer and demonstrate technologies that can embed SLA-aware infrastructures into the service economy"

Why a 'Google Web Drive' Won't Kill Windows, the PC or Anything Else | Epicenter from Wired.com

Why a 'Google Web Drive' Won't Kill Windows, the PC or Anything Else | Epicenter from Wired.com: "There are two essential problems with the whole cloud computing paradigm that no one has really solved.
The first is trust. It’s one thing to trust your e-mail to Google, it’s another thing to trust the company with the entirety of your digital life. Forget problems of security and privacy, even the basic issue of server downtime leaves many people cold.
The other big issue with online storage is that, for most of us, documents like spreadsheets, word processor files and the other formats that Google Docs understands are not what’s taking up the majority of space on our drives. Is the fabled GDrive going to store and sync my 200 or so gigabytes of mp3 files? For free? Somehow I doubt it. What about movies? If you’re like most of us GDrive will likely affect only your Documents folder — maybe four or five gigs worth of files, but hardly a substitute for your hard drive. Microsoft’s Live Sync service already offers exactly that and it hasn’t changed the way we use Windows, nor has it made us throw out our hard drives."

EETimes.com - Going green with DDR3 memory

EETimes.com - Going green with DDR3 memory: "Industry experts concede that about 82 percent of the $500 million bill for a typical large data center is going toward the facility's mechanical and electrical infrastructure.
For the data center server, one contributor to this higher power density is the memory subsystem. A typical 1U server requires a 600 to 1,000-W supply for its power. These high-end servers used in data centers support between 16 to 18 DRAM slots. On a DDR3 (double data rate 3) system, each single slot draws on average 9 W, using a typical 2-Gb module. The total memory subsystem power is around 144 to 162 W, which is nearly 25% of the available power for the system. Multiplying this by the power draw of 40,000 to 80,000 servers in a typical data center translates to between 5 to 13 MW (megawatts), just for the memory subsystem. Over 13,000 American homes can be powered using that same amount of power"

IBM teams up with universities on cloud project | Business Tech - CNET News

IBM teams up with universities on cloud project | Business Tech - CNET News: "IBM on Monday announced that it has partnered with three universities to develop one of the first cloud-computing platforms in the Middle East.
Big Blue, along with Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar University, and Texas A&M University in Qatar, plans to use the Qatar Cloud Computing Center to handle advanced research for search, data mining, scientific modeling and simulation, computational biology, and financial modeling"

A survey of corporate IT: IT's global “cloud” | Let it rise | The Economist

A survey of corporate IT: IT's global “cloud” | Let it rise | The Economist: "According to a recent study, 69% of Americans connected to the web use some kind of “cloud service”, including web-based e-mail or online data storage"

Google plans to make PCs history | Technology | The Observer

Google plans to make PCs history | Technology | The Observer: "cknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing. Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: 'There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,'"

Citrix resurrects King George as hypervisor • The Register

Citrix resurrects King George as hypervisor • The Register: "Xen 3.3 has features that allow for dynamic reallocation memory between guest VMs and for VMs to migrate between different generations of processors. Xen 3.3 also includes support for power management features on servers, which can gear down or shut down unused components (such as cores and caches) that are not being used by workloads."

Forget Cloud Computing, What About Cloud Apps? - Data Center Networks

Forget Cloud Computing, What About Cloud Apps? - Data Center Networks: "I think these types of apps are another nail in the coffin of the traditional PC form factor. These types of apps continue to reduce the hardware requirements on the client side to the point we can completely dis-intermediate the PC altogether and cloud intelligence can be embedded directly into the everyday devices people use day-in and day-out."

Intel Communities: Emerging Compute Models White Paper - Intel

Intel Communities: Emerging Compute Models White Paper - Intel: "T has a range of centrally-managed
compute models from which to choose. From Terminal Services to VDI, from blade PCs
through application and OS streaming, each model has its advantages and trade-offs.
Rarely is a single compute model adequate to meet the needs of all users and all
applications."

Lotus Unveils Cloud Strategy, Mobile Integrations - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

Lotus Unveils Cloud Strategy, Mobile Integrations - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership: "IBM/Lotus Monday began framing its cloud strategy around Notes/Domino and unveiled deeper support for BlackBerry devices on the 20th anniversary of the platform's introduction.

The company also pegged March as the timeframe to ship Alloy, formerly code-named Atlantic, an integration of Notes and SAP Business Suite that brings SAP data into the Notes collaboration environment."

Thoughts and Fragments: Real Terracotta @ Rome JavaDay 2009

Thoughts and Fragments: Real Terracotta @ Rome JavaDay 2009: "Real Terracotta - Real-world scalability patterns with Terracotta."

Intel, Citrix Collaborating on Desktop Virtualization

Intel, Citrix Collaborating on Desktop Virtualization: "Intel and Citrix plan to combine Intel’s vPro management and security technology with Citrix’s Xen hypervisor and other virtualization applications that will allow IT departments to run several secure virtual machines within the same corporate client"

Microsoft expansion to take a hit to cut costs

Microsoft expansion to take a hit to cut costs: "Last year, Microsoft increased the size of its work force by 16 percent. The company employs more than 94,000 people worldwide, including 40,000 in the Puget Sound region"

Cisco Plans Big Push Into Server Market - NYTimes.com

Cisco Plans Big Push Into Server Market - NYTimes.com: "companies like Cisco see an opportunity to produce a new, potentially disruptive class of hardware and software management systems that span an entire data center."

Humour

Humour: "It sounds like English, but I can't understand a word you're saying."

IBM to locate global computer programming center at Michigan State University | MSU News | Michigan State University

IBM to locate global computer programming center at Michigan State University | MSU News | Michigan State University: "EAST LANSING, Mich. — Big Blue has found a fertile spot to grow in the land of green and white, with IBM’s decision to locate an application development center on the campus of Michigan State University.

The first of its kind for the company in the United States, the IBM facility is the product of an agreement to expand MSU’s recruiting, research and educational partnerships with the information technology giant. IBM already is a top employer of MSU graduates.

The IBM Global Delivery Center for Application Services will be housed on the second floor of the former MSU Federal Credit Union headquarters on the south end of campus. A full-service MSUFCU branch on the first floor will continue to operate there."

cloud actions

Cloud Computing 2009 New Year’s Resolutions
Written by Michael Sheehan on Dec 29th, 2008 | Filed under: Cloud Computing, General, GoGrid, Hosting, Industry, ServePath

new_years_hat The start of a New Year is upon us so it is time to get a list together of things that you will do (or do your best to do) in the coming year. Everybody has their own personal Resolution lists, but what about your Business ones? How are you going to remain competitive? What steps are you going to take to cut your budget to remain lean and mean? Are you going to stick with your current methods or adopt some new strategies?

Here are some “Resolutions” that you can think about as you ready your business for 2009.

1. Invest some time in understanding the term “Cloud Computing” – there are several easy-to-understand definitions and movies that have come out that make Cloud Computing a bit more understandable. This one was done at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo. Then came the GoGrid “Cloud Computing in Plain English”. Recently, there is a new “In Plain English” from the actual Common Craft folks (whom we got our inspiration from). And here is a more technical presentation that came out recently. Regardless, there are lots of sources out there for quick understandings. I have been maintaining a Bookmark RSS feed as well of many of the Cloud Computing blogs and sites. Subscribe to that feed for updated links. Also, read through the popular Cloud Computing Group on Google. Lastly, you can check Wikipedia for their ever evolving definition of Cloud Computing.
2. Do some research on different Cloud Providers – no Cloud Computing provider is the same, and the differentiation is continuing. Last year (2008), I introduced the idea of the Cloud Pyramid which has Cloud Applications (SalesForce) at the top, then Cloud Platforms (Google App Engine or Microsoft Azure) in the middle and finally Cloud Infrastructure (GoGrid and Amazon EC2) as the bottom foundation. Also hooked into it are Cloud Extenders (e.g., Amazon’s SQS) and Cloud Aggregators (RightScale). It’s pretty obvious that there are many choices to be made and that these are very specific to the type of business you are running. In fact, we will be further segmenting the IaaS (Cloud Infrastructure) section more over the next few weeks. Briefly, GoGrid is now being positioned as a “CloudCenter” (which is essentially, a DataCenter equivalent but in the Cloud). More on that later. In the meantime, compile a series of questions for yourself and for your prospective provider. We will get a list together of things you might want to ask (post to come).
3. Review your IT Budget – If you are like most companies out there, you are going through your 2009 budgeting (or have done so already and are probably on your 10th revision now). One way to make your CFO happy is to reduce your Capital Expenditures (CapEx). The easiest way to do that is to really take a hard look at Cloud Computing. If you can slash your CapEx spend by downsizing your physical server footprints, you can easily upsize that same footprint in the Cloud.
4. Empower your Programmers – Cloud Computing offers something new to Programmers: the ability to programmatically control their IT infrastructure. Using an API, Programmers can skin the functionality provided by Clouds as well as develop “intelligent” applications that scale dynamically, for example.
5. Empower your IT Staff – Be sure that you don’t ignore your IT Staff as you look at the Cloud as a physical IT infrastructure alternative. They have some best practices and standards that should be incorporated in what your IT strategies will be. Let them experiment with the Cloud so that they fully grasp what it can do for your organization. They may tell you that it is a great direction to go in, or, they may say that your current infrastructure simply cannot be ported to the Cloud. There may also be some hybrid solutions (like GoGrid’s Cloud Connect) that will give them the best of both worlds.

Goodreads | quotes by Dorothy Parker (page 1 of 2)

Goodreads | quotes by Dorothy Parker (page 1 of 2): "'I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.'
— Dorothy Parker"

Green Datacenter Trends - Web Hosting Unleashed

Green Datacenter Trends - Web Hosting Unleashed: ". They accounted for 1 percent of all U.S. power consumption in 2000, 2 percent in 2005 and are predicted to hit 3 to 4 percent by 2010,"

Energy Matters: The Physics Definitions of Energy and Work

Energy Matters: The Physics Definitions of Energy and Work: "Work and energy share the same unit and it's measured in the SI(International Standard) unit of joule(J) which is the product of Newton(unit for force) and meter"

How to benchmark data center energy costs

How to benchmark data center energy costs: "One such method of measuring energy efficiency, developed recently by the Uptime Institute, a data center research organization, is corporate average data center efficiency (CADE). This calculation multiplies the efficiency of an organization's technology by the efficiency of the physical facility."

8 Predictions for Enterprise Web 2.0 in 2009 | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com

8 Predictions for Enterprise Web 2.0 in 2009 | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com: "3. Cloud computing will remain one of the biggest new Internet developments. The cloud computing story, as compelling as it is today for many situations, will only get larger in 2009. While the some of the bloom may be lost off the rose as some of the complexities and risks surface in early pilot projects, the cloud computing industry as a whole will grow in leaps and bounds as organizations seek to cut costs, manage growth/shrinkage, and shorten time to market. Expect major new products from the big existing players such as Amazon and Force.com as well as new entries from big firms and startups alike."

(866) 265-7685 / 8662657685

(866) 265-7685 / 8662657685: "This number is associated with the number 201-210-3618 to call 866-265-7685. It's a message that they are trying to reach me and it's important for me to call this number. I'm thinking if they want to talk to me, they should give me a hint such as what company is calling or what they want before expecting me to call them.
Caller ID: Global Vantage
Caller: Global Vantage
Caller Type: Collection Agency"

Possible Cloud Monitoring Tools | IT Management and Cloud Blog

Possible Cloud Monitoring Tools | IT Management and Cloud Blog: "Nagios
Most prevalent open source monitoring product.
Hyperic
At this point they are leading the pack with the most work done with (Amazon, Rackspace, and Mosso).
Zenoss
Not many cloud stories yet. Very sound monitoring tool.
Zabbix
I have used this product before and it is a solid tool. I am not sure if it’s a good play in the clouds. However it is written in C and might be better suited for performance (ala clouds).
OpenNMS
I need to research.
Ganglia
Very prevalent in the grid space. Might make a great candidate for cloud monitoring.
Collectd
Rightscale uses it as their monitoring tool. They seem to be making all the right moves, who am I to argue.
Ntop
Written in C. Might be a good tool for the cloud.
Monit
Needs research
Gkrellm
Needs research"

Home Page - KITE Keynote Testing Enviroment

Home Page - KITE Keynote Testing Enviroment: "KITE tests your site from a variety of locations worldwide by collecting data about the specific site transactions you want to study"

OpenNebula :: start

OpenNebula :: start: "OpenNebula is an open source virtual infrastructure engine that enables the dynamic deployment and re-placement of virtual machines on a pool of physical resources. ONE (OpenNebula) extends the benefits of virtualization platforms from a single physical resource to a pool of resources, decoupling the server not only from the physical infrastructure but also from the physical location."

The Cloud Computing Ecosystem: The Top 100 Cloud Players | SILVERLIGHT DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL

The Cloud Computing Ecosystem: The Top 100 Cloud Players | SILVERLIGHT DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL: "Cloud computing is an opportunity for business to implement low cost, low power and high efficiency systems to deliver scalable infrastructure. It increases capacity and expands computing capabilities without heavy investment in infrastructure, training or software licensing."

NVIDIA's Ion Small Form-Factor PC Platform, Live From CES - HotHardware

NVIDIA's Ion Small Form-Factor PC Platform, Live From CES - HotHardware: "At the Consumer Electronics Show this past week, NVIDIA was demonstrating a new reference platform for an ultra small form-factor multimedia PC and we should underscore the word 'ultra'."

Study: Half of developers plan to work on SaaS in '09 | InfoWorld | News | 2009-01-12 | By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service

Study: Half of developers plan to work on SaaS in '09 | InfoWorld | News | 2009-01-12 | By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service: "More than half of all developers worldwide on average are expecting to work on SaaS (software as a service) applications within the next year, according to a new survey by Evans Data Corporation"

Finding distinction in 'infrastructure as a service' | The Wisdom of Clouds - CNET News

Finding distinction in 'infrastructure as a service' | The Wisdom of Clouds - CNET News

To briefly recap the cloud market for context, commercial cloud computing has traditionally been seen as consisting of three distinct offerings:


software as a service (SaaS): Complete application systems delivered over the Internet on some form of "on-demand" billing system. Examples include Salesforce.com, WebEx, and Workday.
platform as a service (PaaS): Development platforms and middleware systems hosted by the vendor, allowing developers to simply code and deploy without directly interacting with underlying infrastructure. Examples include Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure, and Force.com.
infrastructure as a service (IaaS): Raw infrastructure, such as servers and storage, is provided from the vendor premises directly as an on-demand service. Examples include Amazon Web Services, GoGrid, and Flexiscale.

What Randy is arguing, however, is that there is a clear distinction between the service ecosystem approach of Amazon Web Services (which he calls an infrastructure Web service) and a more utilitarian infrastructure-focused cloud service such as the ones many of the hosting companies-turned-cloud providers have produced, including GoGrid, Flexiscale, and Rackspace CloudServers. He calls those companies providers of "cloud centers."

Sublinear-time-Survey-BEATCS.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Sublinear-time-Survey-BEATCS.pdf (application/pdf Object)

ElasticVapor :: Life in the Cloud: The United Federation of Cloud Providers

ElasticVapor :: Life in the Cloud: The United Federation of Cloud Providers: "A fundamental challenge in creating and managing a globally decentralized cloud computing environment is that of maintaining consistent connectivity between various untrusted components that are capable of self-organization while remaining fault tolerant."

Platform virtualization - top 25 providers (software, hardware, combined) | MyTestBox.com - web software reviews, news, tips & tricks

Platform virtualization - top 25 providers (software, hardware, combined) | MyTestBox.com - web software reviews, news, tips & tricks: "n the article about cloud computing/utility computing/grid computing we’ve presented the most important companies which offers cloud computing hosting."

Engineering Windows 7 : Windows 7 Energy Efficiency

Engineering Windows 7 : Windows 7 Energy Efficiency: "The base hardware platform is really dictated by the system manufacturer. The customer gets the ultimate choice when they buy a system—the customer can buy a system with ultra-efficient hardware components or can buy a system with components that favor performance over power consumption. There are desktop and mobile PCs in all kinds of form factors, with varying capabilities and power consumption levels. Some mobile PCs have a normal 3 or 6-cell battery, while others have an extended 9-cell battery or another external battery that can be added to the computer. The challenge for Windows is to be energy efficient across the wide range of hardware in the Windows ecosystem. Looking at a modern laptop, here is where the power goes:

Laptop power consumption."

Enter The Dragon: AMD Phenom II X4 940 - HotHardware

Enter The Dragon: AMD Phenom II X4 940 - HotHardware: "odel / Processor Frequency: AMD Phenom II Processor Model X4 940 / X4 920 / 3.0GHz, 2.8GHz
L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)
L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor)
L3 Cache Size: 6MB (shared)
Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller, capable of being configured for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes
Memory Controller Frequency: Up to 1.8GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management
Types of Memory: Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2 8500 (DDR2-1066MHz)
HyperTransport 3.0: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 3600MHz full duplex
Total Processor Bandwidth: Up to 31.5 GB/s bandwidth
Packaging: Socket AM2+ 940-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA) (backward compatible with Socket AM2)
Fab location: AMD's Fab 36 wafer fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany
Process Technology: 45nm (.045-micron) DSL Silicon on Insulator (SOI)
Approximate Transistor count: approx. ~758 million (65nm)
Approximate Die Size: 258 mm2 (45nm)
Nominal Voltage: .0875-1.5 Volts
Max Ambient Case Temp: 62 degress Celsius
Max TDP: 125 Watts
ACP: *to be announced after launch
Future Memory Controller Note: Future 45nm processors ve"

Frequently Asked Questions - Mininova

Frequently Asked Questions - Mininova: "Mininova is entirely written by us (the admins) in PHP. It doesn't use any template or other system, because they are all too slow. Mininova is running on 4 webservers, 4 database servers, 2 search servers, one NFS server, and one load balancer (plus 5 additional servers for the forum, blog and the ads).

We use LightTPD as webserver because with a lot of hits it's just faster than Apache (which we used to run). Mininova makes heavy use of XCache to cache compiled PHP scripts. XCache is also used to cache blocks of HTML which are generated using information from the database that doesn't change very often or which are requested very often. As DBMS we use MySQL because it's free and fast."

Facebook | The Facebook Blog

Facebook | The Facebook Blog: "Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day."

IBM Completes ILOG Business Events Planning Acquisition | Business 2.0 Press

IBM Completes ILOG Business Events Planning Acquisition | Business 2.0 Press: "IBM has just completed its $340 million acquisition of ILOG Inc. ILOG is a Pairs based business rules engine maker. The systems provide business intelligence and allow executives to make better decisions based on events analysis. IBM was interested in taking over ILOG as IBM felt the merger would allow businesses to process and monitor more complex events with the ILOG systems. More companies are beginning to enter the events planning space, including Oracle and Streambase."

Multivariate normal distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Multivariate normal distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Multivariate normality tests

Multivariate normality tests check a given set of data for similarity to the multivariate normal distribution. The null hypothesis is that the data set is similar to the normal distribution, therefore a sufficiently small p-value indicates non-normal data. Multivariate normality tests include the Cox-Small test [3] and Smith and Jain's adaptation [4] of the Friedman-Rafsky test."

Maddie: A Dog

 
A no-flash shot of one of our three dogs... What an expression..

NoMoreClipboard.com Medical Professional Information - DAVID STEWART MD - Orthopedist

NoMoreClipboard.com Medical Professional Information - DAVID STEWART MD - Orthopedist: "DAVID STEWART MD
Orthopedist

Practice Information:
604 W Warner Rd
SUITE C-3
Chandler, AZ 85225-2906

Business Phone: (480) 899-4333"

Man who snatched wig will have toupee | Oddly Enough | Reuters

Man who snatched wig will have toupee | Oddly Enough | Reuters: "Man who snatched wig will have toupee"

Architects Rule! : Real-life Dilbert manager quotes

Architects Rule! : Real-life Dilbert manager quotes: "'Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.'"

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: The Bush Presidential Library

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: The Bush Presidential Library: "A friend sent me an amusing email with some details on the various rooms that will be available at the George W. Bush Presidential Library. I'll paste it below the fold.

The 'W' Presidential Library will include:

The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction and will remain so for at least a decade.

The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.

The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you won't even have to show up.

The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they won't let you in.

The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they won't let you out.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.

The National Debt room which is huge and has no ceiling.

The 'Tax Cut' Room with entry only to the wealthy.

The 'Economy Room' which is in the toilet.

The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they'll make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes a fifth time.

The Dick Cheney Room, in a famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.

The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty.

The Supreme Court's"

TG Daily - Solid-state disks hit half a terabyte

TG Daily - Solid-state disks hit half a terabyte: "Toshiba said it will showcase a 512 GB solid-state disk (SSD) drive at next month’s Consumer Electronics show (CES). The 2.5” drive is likely to be the highest-capacity SSD when shown at the tradeshow, but the device will not go into production until the second half of next year."

Top 12 Tech Embarrassments in 2008

Top 12 Tech Embarrassments in 2008: "“Now I believe the time is right for us to bring in a new leader — someone who will build on the important pillars we’ve put in place and who will take the reins on the critical decisions our company faces.”"

Facebook Growth Explodes, Site Reaches 140 Million Active Users - NYTimes.com

Facebook Growth Explodes, Site Reaches 140 Million Active Users - NYTimes.com: "'the Facebook engineering team has been tweaking its use of memcached, and says it can now handle 200,000 UDP requests per second. Facebook has detailed its refinements to memcached, which it hopes will be included in the official memcached repository. For now, their changes have been released to github.'"

Google App Engine for developers

Google App Engine for developers: "Purchase dedicated servers or virtualized slices. Estimate necessary CPU, memory, disk space, etc. at each tier.
Configure a web server for dynamic content. Install Python and its eggs, Apache HTTPd and extra modules such as modwsgi. Configure and tweak each. Open appropriate ports. Listen.
Setup a MySQL database server and choose the appropriate storage engine. Configure MySQL, add users, add permissions. Tweak and optimize.
Add an in-memory caching layer for frequently accessed dynamic content.
Monitor your uptime and resource utilization with Ganglia and/or other tools on each machine.
Serve static files such as JavaScript, CSS, and images from a specialized serving environment such as Amazon's Simple Storage Service.
Turn your static server into an origin server for a CDN with points of presence close to your website's users.
Connect each piece of the stack, keep its software updated to avoid security vulnerabilities, and hopefully respond to all website requests in less than a second.
Dedicate work hours and expertise to all the above. Hire outside assistance if needed.
Don't go broke trying."

ongoing · What Sun Should Do

ongoing · What Sun Should Do: "Cloud · Here are some things we don’t know yet about “The Cloud”: ¶
Will it operate at the level of virtual hardware, like Amazon’s AWS, or at Platform as a Service, like Google App engine (and, de facto, much of the PHP community)?
Will buyers accept a certain amount of lock-in, or will they insist on zero barriers to exit?
Will those who deploy enterprise applications be willing to let their data offsite and into the cloud? If so, what kinds of privacy guarantees will they require?
Will those who deploy enterprise applications want to build internal cloud-flavored infrastructure?"

ongoing · 2008 Disk Performance

ongoing · 2008 Disk Performance: "As for the random-access number... words fail me. I’ve never seen numbers like this on any disk-like storage device ever; nearly 8000 seeks/second. This is into getting into territory that’s competitive with memcached and friends."

Article for all Marketing folks

PsycNET - Option to Buy: "Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.By Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 77(6), Dec 1999, 1121-1134"

NewsFactor Network | The Tech Trends To Expect in 2009

NewsFactor Network | The Tech Trends To Expect in 2009: "How will tiny cell phones handle all those new tasks? The short answer is they won't. New tools called Internet assistants will help wireless devices send demanding computing tasks via the wireless Web to other computers or to servers -- off in what's known as 'the cloud.' 'Someone is going to design a personal assistant -- by that I mean a suite of services, customized just for you, that exists on a server farm,'"

Elastic IT resources transform data centers - Network World

Elastic IT resources transform data centers - Network World: "Private clouds will need a meta operating system to manage all of an enterprise's distributed resources as a single computing pool, Gartner analyst Thomas Bittman said, arguing that the server operating system relied upon so heavily today is undergoing a transition. Virtualization became popular because of the failures of x86 server operating systems, which essentially limit each server to one application and waste tons of horsepower, he says. Now spinning up new virtual machines is easy, and they proliferate quickly."

Private clouds showing up on IT’s agenda - NYTimes.com

Private clouds showing up on IT’s agenda - NYTimes.com: "The corporations building their own private clouds include such notable names as Bechtel, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and BT, according to The 451 Group. The research firm found in a survey of 1,300 corporate software buyers that about 11% of companies are deploying internal clouds or planning to do so."

Qualcomm aims chip at tiny, always-on laptop | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

Qualcomm aims chip at tiny, always-on laptop | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

The new team was tasked to turbocharge typical ARM designs that were "maxing out" at about 500MHz, which isn't enough speed to deliver the experience that Qualcomm is aiming for. (Intel's Atom for Netbooks, by comparison, now maxes out at 1.6GHz.)

"There was a need to go do something beyond this. So, we went and got the architecture license (from ARM) and we have this team of about 50 CPU designers and we put them to task. So, four years and $350 (million) to $400 million later, we have a CPU that actually works better than the (typical) ARM CPU."

The piece de resistance of this strategy is the Qualcomm QSD8672 dual-core Snapdragon that features two CPU computing cores capable of 1.5GHz performance, and a host of other features includes HSPA+, up to 28Mbps download speeds, 1080p high-definition video, Wi-Fi, mobile TV, and GPS. The graphics core is based on Advanced Micro Devices' ATI unit's technology.

Qualcomm is able to achieve this relatively high speed (1.5GHz) for a low-power processor because it did more than simply get a license from ARM. "We went and got an architecture license from ARM. The architecture license was for their new instruction set, the V7 instruction set. There's a difference between getting an architecture license and just getting a core license. A core license means ARM does the (chip) core and they give it to you. The architecture license is different: the actual implementation is your own," he said.

The 45-nanometer processor will be built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

Handicapping cloud computing: The big picture | Business Tech - CNET News

Handicapping cloud computing: The big picture | Business Tech - CNET News: "In summary, we think Amazon's Web Services are not a major growth or revenue generator for the company. Instead, they provide benefits such as PR positioning of Amazon as a 'technology' company rather than simply (as) an online retailer. They also provide interesting projects for Amazon's developers, who otherwise would be primarily confined to developing the shopping platform. This, we think, enables Amazon to attract a higher caliber of engineers and developers than (can) its competitors, such as eBay."

EETimes.com - AMD moves to 45-nm process node with Shanghai

EETimes.com - AMD moves to 45-nm process node with Shanghai: "Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) moves to the 45-nanometer (nm) technology node with the launch of its new Opteron server chip, code-named Shanghai. AMD is the third manufacturer to reach this milestone after Panasonic and then Intel."

Salon Book Awards 2008 | Salon Books

Salon Book Awards 2008 | Salon Books: "A concept Walker calls 'murketing,' in which advertisers refrain from establishing a mass-culture identity for a product and instead encourage various subcultures to project their own meanings onto it, may be the most helpful model for understanding the precedent-busting campaign of Barack Obama."

EC2 Infrastructure - MindTouch Developer Center

EC2 Infrastructure - MindTouch Developer Center: "he migration of the wik.is cluster to Amazon EC2 (using RightScale) has vastly improved the architecture of wik.is. Here are some of the technical challenges we faced and how we addressed them using the RightScale/EC2 platform.



Here is a diagram of our overall infrastructure"

Comfort with meaninglessness the key to good programmers - Boing Boing

Comfort with meaninglessness the key to good programmers - Boing Boing: "To write a computer program you have to come to terms with this, to accept that whatever you might want the program to mean, the machine will blindly follow its meaningless rules and come to some meaningless conclusion. In the test the consistent group showed a pre-acceptance of this fact: they are capable of seeing mathematical calculation problems in terms of rules, and can follow those rules wheresoever they may lead. The inconsistent group, on the other hand, looks for meaning where it is not. The blank group knows that it is looking at meaninglessness, and refuses to deal with it"

Amnesia - Joel on Software

Amnesia - Joel on Software: "And there, on the video, I had to watch myself listening to Babak explaining the timesheet reporting plug-in, and the record shows that I appeared to understand what was being said to me, and, I’m afraid to admit, I appear to have given my tacit approval to the feature.

AHEM.

In short, I’m turning into one of those crazy bosses that approves things, and then gets upset when you do them. This keeps happening. I must be driving people crazy."

The Old New Thing : A bar on Microsoft main campus? What should we call it?

The Old New Thing : A bar on Microsoft main campus? What should we call it?: "A bar on Microsoft main campus? What should we call it?"

Materialized Views (MV) with MySQL

Materialized Views (MV) with MySQL: "A Materialised View (MV) is the precalculated (materialised) result of a query"

Overview of IBM DB2 pureXML | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services

Overview of IBM DB2 pureXML | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services: "IBM about DB2 pureXML (most of the IBM side of the talking was done by Conor O’Mahony and Qi Jin)."

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com: "The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue."

Research@Intel · https://everywhere! Encrypting the Internet

Research@Intel · https://everywhere! Encrypting the Internet: "Using our software we are able to accelerate RSA 1024 from a performance of approximately 1500 signatures per second (OpenSSLg) to potentially 2900 signatures per second on a single Nehalem Core"

Linus' blog

Linus' blog: "because it's a reasonably recent Intel chipset, and some simple debugging facilities is the one thing I've been asking Intel to add to the core chipset for the last several years so that we could do some kind of sane tracing over complete failures where all other devices are unavailable and you have to power off the machine to get it back."

InternetNews Realtime IT News - VMware, VDIworks Focus on Virtual Desktops

InternetNews Realtime IT News - VMware, VDIworks Focus on Virtual Desktops: "Storage optimization

In addition, VMware View 3 offers storage optimization through its View Composer feature. This reduces storage requirements by up to 70 percent, Raj Mallempati, VMware's group product manager, desktop products, told InternetNews.com.

'With a typical VDI [virtual desktop interface], you need dedicated storage for each desktop, but with View Composer, you take one 'gold' image and create a bunch of clones, all of which share just the one disk on which the gold image sits,"

Bill Clementson's Blog: Clojure could be to Concurrency-Oriented Programming what Java was to OOP

Bill Clementson's Blog: Clojure could be to Concurrency-Oriented Programming what Java was to OOP


t's the mutable state, stupid. All concurrency issues boil down to coordinating access to mutable state. The less mutable state, the easier it is to ensure thread safety.
Make fields final unless they need to be mutable.
Immutable objects are automatically thread-safe. Immutable objects simplify concurrent programming tremendously. They are simpler and safer, and can be shared freely without locking or defensive copying.
Encapsulation makes it practical to manage the complexity. You could write a thread-safe program with all data stored in global variables, but why would you want to? Encapsulating data within objects makes it easier to preserve their invariants; encapsulating synchronization within objects makes it easier to comply with their synchronization policy.
Guard each mutable variable with a lock.
Guard all variables in an invariant with the same lock.
Hold locks for the duration of compound actions.
A program that accesses a mutable variable from multiple threads without synchronization is a broken program.
Don't rely on clever reasoning about why you don't need to synchronize.
Include thread safety in the design process-or explicitly document that your class is not thread-safe.
Document your synchronization policy.