Dutch Hospital Installs Sun MD Container - Data Center Knowledge

Dutch Hospital Installs Sun MD Container - Data Center Knowledge: "Data center containers are gaining traction, and Sun Microsystems (JAVA) is the latest company to reveal a new customer. A Sun MD S20 (Blackbox) unit has been bought and installed by the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Joerg Schwarz of Sun has photos showing the process of installing a Sun Modular Data Center, including detailed views of the preparation of the pad. As with several previous installations, the 'Blackbox' is actually white (I guess the black version with the green logo looked better in marketing brochures)."

Sun was the first company to make headlines when it introduced the "data center in a box" concept in October 2006. Container-based data centers have since been introduced by Rackable Systems (RACK), Verari Systems and most recently by IBM (IBM) with its iDataPlex series.

Here's a recap of the other Sun MD customer deployments that have been made public:

• The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) became the first site to deploy a Sun MD last July, using the unit to boost its scientific computing capacity by a third. The SLAC has since purchased a second unit.
• Mobile Telesystems, the largest mobile phone operator in Russia, has deployed several Blackboxes to manage remote operations.
• Belgium-based Hansen Transmissions is employing Sun MD S20s in its program to expand wind turbine and industrial gearbox manufacturing facilities in India and China.
• 30 Blackbox units will be lowered into a former coal mine located 100 meters under the ground in Japan's Chubu region. Sun is part of an 11-company joint venture building the data center, with other partners including Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ and BearingPoint (BE).

Gartner: iDataPlex is the Future of Servers - Data Center Knowledge

Gartner: iDataPlex is the Future of Servers - Data Center Knowledge: "Gartner released a research note Tuesday on the shift in the server market towards Web 2.0 and high performance computing, exemplified in IBM's launch of the iDataPlex server last week. Gartner analysts John Enck, Andrew Butler and Carl Claunch believe that 'innovation in packaging will continue to drive data center density.' An excerpt:

Sales of servers in the Web 2.0 and high-performance computing (HPC) niches are outpacing those in the general server market. These two segments currently have unique requirements: Purchasers want the lowest-cost, lowest-overhead server, but with the most efficient power management and cooling. IBM's iDataPlex is explicitly targeted at these market segments and provides IBM with an architectural framework for addressing the emerging interest in cloud computing. ... Although iDataPlex is not appropriate for most enterprises today, it points to where server hardware is heading. Servers have evolved from tower servers to blade servers mounted in a chassis — and now the rack itself is becoming an integral part of the server.

Gartner said it expects similar offerings from a number of mainstream vendors within the next two years."

A Web-Scale Computing Architecture

IT Conversations | O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference | Werner Vogels: "One of the key difficulties in running and managing an internet business lies in building a technical infrastructure that can handle spikes in traffic but which remains cost-effective for normal operations. In other words, businesses often need to be able to scale up or down at a moment's notice.

These problems affect companies of all sizes and are as relevant to an enterprise trying to shave costs as they are to a start-up.Werner Vogels presents the Amazon solution and shows how their S3 (Simple Storage Service) and EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud) offerings provide a blueprint for 'Web-Scale Computing'. Vogels contends that this allows businesses to outsource their 'heavy lifting' and implement an elastic business model that can quickly respond to demand.

Vogels introduces customers who are already using these business models. One of these is our very own Doug Kaye, who describes how Gigavox Media is exploiting the potential of Amazon's web services."

Thoughtstream: Firefox, Google, Cloud Apps, and Mesh | sarahintampa

Thoughtstream: Firefox, Google, Cloud Apps, and Mesh | sarahintampa

Aptana to Launch Cloud Platform

Aptana to Launch Cloud Platform: "When released, Aptana Cloud will be the first elastic application cloud with ready-made Web stacks for the most popular scripting languages, 'featuring the most popular and widely adopted Web infrastructure, ready to use and scale as you need it,' Hakman said. 'You can develop on your desktop and sync out to the cloud.'

Aptana Cloud features ready-to-go services, such as PHP, MySQL and Apache Web servers. In addition, Aptana Jaxer enables AJAX developers to use their JavaScript and AJAX skills on the server-side to build entire applications, data services or presentation tiers that complement PHP and Ruby On Rails.

“Ruby on Rails is what's next on deck for Aptana Cloud support, and Python would be a natural extension, too.' Hakman told eWEEK.

Meanwhile, Aptana Cloud is built to complement cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon, Google and Joyent, Hakman said. Aptana's initial cloud computing partner in the effort is Joyent."

Microsoft’s elephant in the OS room: Apple | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Microsoft’s elephant in the OS room: Apple | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: "In our Pacific Crest Mosaic surveys, we have seen increasing evidence of Apple taking share in the enterprise market. While Apple is not the only reason for the Microsoft Client shortfall, it seems plausible that it could be a larger factor than acknowledged by Microsoft. As a result, we are somewhat skeptical of Microsoft’s assumption that its Client revenue will snap back next quarter."

Typical Programmer - Relational Database Experts Jump The MapReduce Shark

Typical Programmer - Relational Database Experts Jump The MapReduce Shark: "In this article relational database experts David DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker compare MapReduce to traditional relational database systems (RDBMSs) and find MapReduce wanting. They make some strong points in favor or relational databases, but the comparison is not appropriate. When I finished reading the article I was thinking that the authors did not understand MapReduce or the idea of data in the cloud, or why programmers might be excited about non-RDBMS ways to manage data."

"MapReduce has the same relationship to RDBMSs as my motorcycle has to a snowplow — it’s a step backwards in snowplow technology if you look at it that way."

from the comments to this post:

"Other articles I’m inspired to write based on the referenced article: I tried using MapReduce to create a website, and it sucks compared to markup with CSS. It doesn’t have any concept of how to style a website. MapReduce is a serious step backward in terms of web design.

I also tried to have MapReduce babysit my kids, and I came back half an hour later to find that it was just sitting there crunching data, and wasn’t watching them at all. This thing can’t do anything at all.

Also, compared to a standard hammer, this MapReduce things is really crappy at pounding nails into things."

MapReduce: A major step backwards - The Database Column

MapReduce: A major step backwards - The Database Column: "As both educators and researchers, we are amazed at the hype that the MapReduce proponents have spread about how it represents a paradigm shift in the development of scalable, data-intensive applications. MapReduce may be a good idea for writing certain types of general-purpose computations, but to the database community, it is:

1. A giant step backward in the programming paradigm for large-scale data intensive applications

2. A sub-optimal implementation, in that it uses brute force instead of indexing

3. Not novel at all -- it represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago

4. Missing most of the features that are routinely included in current DBMS

5. Incompatible with all of the tools DBMS users have come to depend on

First, we will briefly discuss what MapReduce is; then we will go into more detail about our five reactions listed above."

As noted below, David DeWitt has recently been given a major gig heading up a new database research lab for Microsoft at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. -- MG

Create PDFs via Code with Adobe Share API

Create PDFs via Code with Adobe Share API

Adobe has updated Share, their service for document sharing and management, so that users can now convert uploaded documents into PDF and they also have exposed this functionality in the Share API. This is a useful enhancement that should broaden the utility of the service (we previously looked at the Adobe Share API in our coverage of 10 Online Storage APIs).

OAuth Coming to All Google Data APIs

OAuth Coming to All Google Data APIs
Like the feature on many cars today where you give the parking attendant a special key to your car that gives him some, but not all, access to your vehicle. On the Web you now have your own keys to dozens of sites but how to best handle the mashup-style case of site A wants you to grant them access to get some data from site B? Ideally you don’t want to give site A your password to site B. OAuth aims to simplify this problem: “It allows you the User to grant access to your private resources on one site (which is called the Service Provider), to another site (called Consumer, not to be confused with you, the User).”

Backlash starts against 'sexy' databases | Reg Developer

Backlash starts against 'sexy' databases | Reg Developer: "Holland, who said he understands the shortcomings of a relational database but also knows its strengths, concluded: 'The bottom line is don't tell me RDMBS can't scale if you can't write a decent query or design a normalized database schema.'

Elsewhere, evangelists have been taken to task for hype, by 'fawning' and posting comments 'verging on satire' in their support of the new wave - specifically, SimpleDB. Todd Hoff praised SimpleDB for eliminating much of the complexity of traditional RDBMS systems by dispensing with tiresome technicalities such as data schema and normalization. He said such things are unnecessary for many web applications.

Defending RDBMS, computer science student Ryan Park listed 10 reasons for avoiding SimpleDB, CouchDB and Google DataStore. Among them: data integrity is not guaranteed, complicated reports and ad hoc queries will require a lot more coding, and relational databases are scalable even with massive data sets.

'Mr. Hoff's supposed advantages are actually serious disadvantages to the paradigm. Before designing your architecture around a database engine like SimpleDB, it's important to consider the reasons not to do so,' Park wrote."

Ubuntu man says Microsoft's about to 'swallow a hand-grenade' | Reg Developer

Ubuntu man says Microsoft's about to 'swallow a hand-grenade' | Reg Developer: "During a recent interview in London, Shuttleworth had plenty to say about Microhoo.

"The Microsoft and Yahoo thing is fascinating," he told me. "I think the ad game is lost. So, Microsoft buying Yahoo! now on search? Come on. Two failing operators will just continue to decline together. On search, I think it's totally a waste of time."

...

"I think this game will swing from the desktop to the web and eventually back again in really interesting ways. They already have a hell of a big investment in whatever their vision is. It's not like they were waiting to buy Yahoo!. They were spending gagillions of dollars, which they have, on data centers for that sort of vision. So, what does Yahoo give them then? A brand, which they will probably screw up."

Microsoft snags Google-thrashing data pioneer | Reg Developer

Microsoft snags Google-thrashing data pioneer | Reg Developer: "Recently DeWitt and Postgres architect Mike Stonebraker co-authored a controversial attack on Google's MapReduce database. Their view that MapReduce was "a giant step backwards" provoked a robust response from Google's supporters."

Hadoop 0.17 Preview (Hadoop and Distributed Computing at Yahoo!)

Hadoop 0.17 Preview (Hadoop and Distributed Computing at Yahoo!): "Apache Hadoop 0.17 is due for release any day now. Feature freeze for the release was on April 4th. The Hadoop dev community is currently actively fixing blocking issues discovered by users that have tried it out. This is a release we’re very excited about as it introduces many long awaited performance fixes to the platform. We’ve observed on the order of 30%(!) improvement in the runtime of some of the Hadoop benchmarks. As always, user feedback is invaluable and we urge folks to kick the tires on the release and help close it out. Here is a quick rundown of the important changes in the release."

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Apple to the Core | PBS

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Apple to the Core | PBS: "Apple has changed processor families twice before in the Macintosh era so it is more likely, not less, that they will change again. It's even possible we'll see a jump to AMD for some machines before the final days of Apple/Intel. But just as the Intel changeover took a year and was predicted to take two, we're 3-4 years out on this transition. Your next Mac will probably have an Intel CPU, but the one after will be all Apple, through and through."

Why The Yahoo-Microsoft Deal Will Be a Disaster - Silicon Alley Insider

Why The Yahoo-Microsoft Deal Will Be a Disaster - Silicon Alley Insider: "We've poked fun at Yahoo's efforts to pretend that it's in control of this Microsoft process, and we've argued that the transaction is pretty much a done deal. One thing we want to be clear about, however: Yahoo is smart to search for alternatives, because if the deal proceeds as proposed, it will be a disaster--for both Yahoo and Microsoft. (If you're already persuaded of this, see The Answer. If not, read on.)"

Also:
60% Chance Microsoft Walks From Yahoo Deal (MSFT / YHOO) - Silicon Alley Insider

Dear Jerry and Steve... Here's the Answer - Silicon Alley Insider

Next Move in the Microsoft-Yahoo Battle: Analysts, Wall Street, and SAI Readers Weigh In - Silicon Alley Insider

OUseful Info: TweetSpeech - Twitter to Speech Pipe

OUseful Info: TweetSpeech - Twitter to Speech Pipe: "I don't know what prompted it, but yesterday I started looking for a registration free RSS2speech service that I could use to produce and audio version of a Twitter feed."

New in Google Docs: Insert Videos, Edit CSS

New inGoogle Docs: Insert Videos, Edit CSS: "There are so many updates at Google Docs, that you'll need many hours to explore them and start to use them.

You can now access your browser's contextual menu by pressing Shift while right-clicking. This might be useful if you want to search the text from a document online or to use other features included in your browser.

If you don't want to convert a document to PDF and print the generated file, the option to print the document as a web page is back in the File menu. For simple documents, this should be a better option."

For better customization, Google Docs lets you define CSS styles for your documents: Edit > Edit CSS. Those who know CSS will find it faster to define styles and use them in the HTML code. The most important limitation is that you can't use images that are not hosted by Google Docs in your CSS rules. This page shows you how to add watermarks, repeating backgrounds, styled headers, image borders using CSS.

Bill Moyers interviews the Reverend Jeremiah Wright

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS: "Bill Moyers interviews the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in his first broadcast interview with a journalist since he became embroiled in a controversy for his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama. Wright, who retired in early 2008 as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Senator Obama is a member, has been at the center of controversy for comments he made during sermons, which surfaced in the press in March."

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Part I

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Part II

Switch Between Gnome And KDE Desktops In Ubuntu Or Kubuntu

Switch Between Gnome And KDE Desktops In Ubuntu Or Kubuntu: "Switch Between Gnome And KDE Desktops In Ubuntu Or Kubuntu

ubuntulogo.jpgOne of Linux strong points over Windows is the capability to switch desktops. Several exist, but the two most popular are Gnome and KDE. For Windows users, KDE will have a familar Windows XP feel, while Gnome may seem dull.

If you have been using Ubuntu, which uses Gnome as the default desktop, or Kubuntu which uses KDE as the desktop, and have been wondering what the other desktop looks like, you can easily install KDE or Gnome and switch back and forth before logging on to Ubuntu."