Having found a bunch of Android-based Samsung widgets violate four Apple patents, the US International Trade Commission has ordered the giant Korean company to post a bond worth 88% of its US smartphones sales as well as 32.5 % of its media player and 37.6% of its tablet sales if it want to keep selling the things. The decision, which is largely backed by the agency’s staff, is preliminary, subject to the affirmation of the ITC’s six-man board of commissioners and the White House. The commissioners are supposed to decide by February 25 and the president 60 days later. At that point Samsung could be looking at an import blackout.
If James Watt had also invented the Deisel Engine … If Rudolf Diesel had also invented Electric Engine … If Guglielmo Marconi had also invented Telephony … If Alexander Graham Bell had also invented Mobile Phones … If Thomas Alva Edison had also invented the Fluorescent Lamp … If Edgar F. Codd had also invented the rules of post RDBMS technologies … Then they would be like Steve Jobs – the inventor of the next generation technology which supersedes his own invention. It was the MAC which had started the WlMP (Windows Icon Mouse Pointer) era. It was the iPhone and then the iPad which started the post WIMP era. Well … you may say that Steve Jobs did not invent the products alone. But then same thing can be said about all the name mentioned above.
Armed robbers pulled off a heist at the Apple store behind the Paris Opera in the center of town on New Year’s Eve. Reuters reports that they made off with over a $1 million worth of widgetry although Apple is still calculating the loss. Four masked thieves broke in about 9 o’clock at night, three hours after the shop closed, while the local gendarmerie was distracted by celebrations along the Champs Élysées. They escaped in a van.
With the end of year approaching, I find myself looking back at some of our new projects in the second half of 2012 and studying the commonalities. We remain focused on Fortune 500 companies where applications are global, complex, transactional and virtualized – where the need for analytics to automate performance management is greatest – and where the business case for proactive IT operations is most compelling. However, I have noticed a recent trend of an increasing number of new projects emerging across wider industry sectors and application types. I interpret this as a sign that the market for predictive analytics for IT is maturing, and that our investment in an open analytics and integration API platform is paying off by allowing us to integrate to virtually any new data source during the implementation stage.
“There’s been a lot of talk about cloud in Europe and that means there’s a lot of demand for cloud and also for data center space,” explained Jelle Frank van der Zwet, Manager Cloud Segment at Interxion, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 11th International Cloud Expo, held November 5-8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Cloud Expo 2013 New York, June 10–13, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
There are quite a few academic papers and products inspired by the vision of memory-centric DBMS. Most of modern databases serving business applications can already fit within large server RAM available today (2TB). DBMS are heading to memory centric designs and implementation. Contemporary large servers are routinely configured with 2TB of RAM. It is thus possible to fit an entire average size OLTP database in memory directly accessible by CPU. There is a long history of academic research on how to best utilize relatively abundant computer memory. This research is becoming increasingly relevant as databases serving business applications are heading towards memory centric design and implementation. If you simply place Oracle RDBMS's files on Solid State Disk, or configure buffer cache (SGA ) large enough to contain the whole database, Oracle will not magically become an IMDB database, nor it will perform much faster. In order to properly utilize memory, IMDB databases require purposely architected, configured, balanced and optimized hardware ( CPU, RAM, Flash, busses, cluster interconnect ), as well as RDBMS software written with RAM as center point in mind. IMDB's main premise is that data primarily resides in RAM and is only persisted to disk for protection and auxiliary functions. Data structures, methods and processes typically associated with an RDBMS ( index types, join methods, data layout, internal data flows and processing ) need to be (re)designed with RAM-centric axiom in mind.
In "Final Parameters and Local Variables", Dr. Heinz M. Kabutz rants against the generalized used of the final keyword in Java code. For him, this is a "trend' and an "idiotic coding standard". I'm a firm believer of the complete opposite. As a software developer, I spend most of my time reasoning about code. Anything that can make this reasoning easier is welcome. Good practices like short methods and descriptive names fall in this category. I believe immutable variables do too. Immutable variables simplify reasoning because they ensure a stable state within a scope, whether it's a whole class or a single method. Having established invariants is a tremendous help in understanding code.
I did not look closely at the description of this book before acquiring it. I mistakenly thought it was going to be about the Core Frameworks iOS has to offer. I thought that because I own the previous version of the author's book The iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook: Core Concepts and Essential Recipes for iOS Programmers. It turns out the lineup is just being restructured and the iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook: Core Concepts and Essential Recipes for iOS Programmers is being broken into two volumes and a tutorial book. This is the first of a 2 volume cookbook set. I think the more appropriate and less confusing title should have been used like The iOS 6 Essentials Developer's Cookbook, or The iOS 6 Fundamentals Developer's Cookbook. Although it was not what I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found the all the content valuable.
RDBMSs are stable and mature products. While there is nothing radically new on horizon that would challenge Codd's relational theory and related advances in data processing there are some developments that force established vendors like Oracle to come up with new features and products. Column store concept has been around for quite a while. Vendors like HP Vertica grabbed some market share in data warehousing segment with their column store, MPP databases. Oracle Exadata is offering Hybrid Columnar Compression - solution that modifies Oracle standard row based storage (NSM, or row-major) into propriatery format that is probably closer to PAX (as opposed to DSM) classification. Rows of data are reorganized, broken down into columns, compressed and stored in Compression Units which consist of multiple Oracle data blocks. CU is physically implemented as a standard Oracle single column chained row. (Description of CU layout is based on marvelous article written by Oracle expert Jonathan Lewis).
Apple late Monday lost its bid to get a permanent injunction barring 26 of Samsung’s Android-based widgets that a jury found infringed six of Apple’s patents from the American market. Concurrently, the court threw out Samsung’s bid for a new trial. The Korean company claimed the jury, which awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, was misled by a foreman that 20 years ago was involved in a lawsuit with Seagate, his former employer and a company Samsung later bought into. The suit drove him into bankruptcy and he supposedly introduced “incorrect and extraneous legal standards” into the jury’s deliberations that may have produced a faulty verdict. The judge didn’t buy it. Samsung should have asked better questions during voir dire, she said. FOSS Patents says without the injunction the “jury verdict has little more than symbolic value.”
“Racemi is like a moving company – once someone has decided they are going to a private cloud, or a public cloud, we’re the company they call,” stated Lawrence Guillory, CEO of Racemi, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 11th International Cloud Expo, held November 5-8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Cloud Expo 2013 New York, June 10–13, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone, in the entire history of computing, has every bothered to read and consider the contents of a typical End User License Agreement (EULA). Some Product Manager, I suppose (though truthfully, I’m not even sure of this one). The EULA, however, is important. It’s the foundation of an important consent ceremony that ends with only one effective choice: pressing OK. This much-maligned step in every software installation is the only real binding between an end user and a provider of software. Out of this agreement emerges a contract between these two parties, and it is this contact that serves as a legal framework for interpretation should any issues arise in the relationship.
Cloud computing has given birth to a broad range of online services. To maintain a competitive edge, service providers are taking a closer look at their Big Data storage infrastructure in an earnest attempt to improve performance and reduce costs. Large enterprises hosting their own cloud servers are seeking ways to scale and improve performance while maintaining or lowering expenditures. If the status quo of scaling users and storage infrastructure is upheld, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain low cost cloud services, such as online account management or data storage. Service providers will face higher energy consumption in their data centers overall, and many are loath to begin charging for online account access.
“This is a great show for us to talk about Stingray product family, which is our application delivery controller family, and specifically the intersection between Stingray and what’s going on in the world of cloud computing,” stated Apurva Dave, VP of Products & General Manager, Stingray, at Riverbed Technology, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 11th International Cloud Expo, held November 5-8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Cloud Expo 2013 New York, June 10–13, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Evolving regulatory compliance requirements can be a major headache for the IT teams responsible for identity and access management (IAM). Sarbanes Oxley, the wide range of privacy regulations and other federal requirements, have transformed IAM from a problem that keeps the chief information security officer up at night into a true business concern shared by all company executives. Knowing who has access to what information within your organization – and whether they should have that access – is a deceptively complex issue that has the potential to drive a wedge between even the healthiest of relationships across the business. On the surface, it may seem as though the nuts and bolts of IAM should reside in a company’s IT department. This is because there are many islands of information stored in databases across the business that are managed and administered by the IT team. In addition, employee access to particular areas of the network is usually enabled and revoked by IT.
The US Patent and Trademark Office, which has been re-examining Apple’s pinch-to-zoom patent (US No 7,844,915) presumably at Samsung’s behest, said Wednesday that all 21of its claims are invalid on the basis of prior art, specifically for anticipation and obviousness. It’s a preliminary decision. As the Wall Street Journal says, the patent – well, at least claim 8 – was a cornerstone of Apple’s infringement case against Samsung, which filed the PTO’s decision with the federal court in San Jose, California that heard Apple’s infringement case this summer. Apple, which has called the patent the commercially most valuable of the three multitouch software patents-in-suit, is expected to appeal.
Samsung said Tuesday that it will drop its attempts to get Apple products banned anywhere in Europe using its standards-essential patents (SEPs). It’s not dropping its infringement suits, but will limit its SEP claims to monetary damages. It will still seek injunctions for Apple’s alleged infringement of its non-SEP patents. Samsung claimed its action was “unilateral and voluntary,” but FOSS Patents assumes that the European Commission, which has been investigating Samsung’s use of SEPs, leaned sufficiently on the Korean company for it to change its legal strategy ahead of a statement of objections (SO).
Returning from Asia Jefferies financial analyst and Apple follower Peter Misek said several iPhone 6 prototypes and an iTV, presumably integrated with Apple’s mobile ecosystem, appear to be floating around. There’s reportedly an iPhone model with a 4.8-inch Retina+ IGZO screen, 128GB of storage and a new A7 quad-core processor. Misek expects an iPhone 5S with a “new super HD camera/screen, a better battery and near field communications” to ship in June or July. It should come in six and eight different colors instead of just black and white. There may – heavy on may – be a cheaper iPhone, a “retooled iPhone 4” with a “scaled-down modem [and] apps processor,” targeting pre-paid and emerging markets, especially in Asia, that could sell for $200-$250. Foxconn could make 200k-300k a day. An iPad 5 could launch around June with an IGZO screen that would cut the thickness in half and significantly reduce the weight.
The rise of Big Data and the monolithic systems that are now being built on increasingly cloud-based data models is a reality we cannot ignore. This reality has popularized discussions relating to the core component mechanics of many firms’ IT stacks. Key among these technologies is ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning to afford it its full moniker. The term can be taken to be a relatively broad expression as it encompasses software applications that oversee the management of suppliers, customer service, order tracking and all manner of demand and supply-related indicators… … or to put it more simply, ERP systems look after companies’ “systems of record” data.
Google couldn’t have picked a prettier time to release the upgraded version of Google Maps for iOS it’s been working on since Apple kicked it off the iPhone and iPad in September in favor of its own dodgy Apple Maps that couldn’t find the Eiffel Tower, utterly embarrassed the company, forced CEO Tim Cook to publicly apologize and fire the guy responsible. Google Maps for iOS hit the Apple App Store late Wednesday hours after the Australian police labeled Apple Maps “life-threatening” for misdirecting motorists into a desolate Outback desert where you’d better have a four-wheel drive, extra gas and a few canteens to survive. Seems Apple Maps misplaced the town they were headed for. Anyway, you can still hear the Halleluiah chorus that greeted the free Google Maps download. It’s already the top app, embarrassing Apple some more.
When IT people think about application performance monitoring, they're usually thinking about which metrics they should monitor. Some examples of resource metrics may include CPU utilization, disk queue length, and thread pool size. Examples of performance metrics may be application response time, responses per interval of time, and concurrent invocations of an application. "Modeling" is probably not the first term that comes to mind when considering application performance monitoring. But, in fact, “modeling” is exactly what a “domain expert” does when he decides how application components are related with one another, and which metrics matter in gauging application performance.
Well, there may actually be an Apple TV in our future. The Wall Street Journal says the company is working with Asian component suppliers and testing large-screen high-resolution TV prototypes. The testing is apparently in its early days and involves Foxconn, which assembles the iPhone and iPad, and Sharp. Apple has reportedly been testing TV prototypes internally for several years, but it’s unclear if it will bring such a thing to market. The Journal points out that such a move is likely to annoy Samsung, the world’s biggest TV maker by shipment and a major supplier of components to Apple. Their relationship is shot through with holes already because of their litigation over Android.
"Everyone cares about health in a deeply personal way," blogged former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz on Tuesday as he alerted the world to the existence of his new website, PictureofHealth.com.
Thanks to EPractize Labs folks for offering an excellent Training Kits for Oracle Certified Expert, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 EJB 3.1, JPA 2.0, Web Component (JSP & Servlet 3.0) and Web Services (JAX-RS, JAX-WS) Certifications. This is the software book with complete study material for Oracle's Java EE 6 Certification. You can find separate training lab for each exams (JPA, EJB, Web Component and Web Services). The reliability of this simulator is that it is developed by experienced Java experts with practical scenario or program examples, and challenging mock exam questions with brief explanations. Moreover the Training material adheres to Oracle's latest syllabus after Sun certifications have been republished and re-branded under the Oracle certification program.
It’s been a busy and successful seven days for online retailers. Black Friday and Cyber Monday traffic and sales were well above 2011, and there was the extra benefit to those businesses that started deals on Thanksgiving Night. The traffic data collected by the Compuware Ecommerce and Retail Real use Monitoring index matched almost exactly the pattern seen by Akamai for all of their US ecommerce and retail customers on the three busiest days. Performance for many mobile sites has been cited elsewhere as being slow on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Looking at the data over a longer period of time shows that most sites varied little from their regular mobile performance metrics, showing little or no performance difference compared to the week leading up to these peak shopping days.