O BSRSoft Ane Server App que passou a se chamar oficialmente BSRSoft Ane App Server e junto com a sua denominação oficial, ganhará seu primeiro release nos próximos dias.

O anúncio oficial de seu desenvolvimento foi descrito anteriormente aqui em:

http://bsrsoft.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/bsrsoft-disponibilizara-servidor-web-de-aplicacoes-open-source/

Agora deveremos ter o primeiro release funcional do software open source. Porções do código do servidor web NGINX foram utilizados no trabalho. A licença do NGINX é a BSD e a do BSRSoft Ane App Server é a Apache 2. (compatíveis tranquilamente portanto).

O endereço oficial de desenvolvimento do servidor é  https://launchpad.net/bsrsoft-ane-server-app

A partir do lançamento deste release, o desenvolvimento será aberto a todos os interessados que se qualificarem pelos meios que disponibilizaremos.

Este é o primeiro projeto de uma nova plataforma para desenvolvimento colaborativo da BSRSoft integrada ao Launchpad que chamamos de BSRSoft Dev.

Acabamos de disponibilizar diversos novos serviços em nosso segmento de cloud computing (computação em nuvem) em nosso portal.

Todos eles estão relacionados a bancos de dados.

Já contávamos com o MySQL Cloud e agora oferecemos serviços Postgres Cloud e Oracle DB Cloud (versão 10g).

Com essas opções, cobruimos praticamente todo o espectro de aplicações que precisam de bancos de dados para funções desde controle de um simples site até aplicações empresariais com grande quantidade de transações e necessidade de alta escalabilidade, alta estabilidade e velocidade, além de granualaridade em configurações.

Todos estes serviços rodam em nossos cluster especializados em bancos de dados, especialmente otimizados para tarefas que envolvem grande quantidade de IO de disco (usamos RAID 5 SCSI), grande quantidade de memória em cada nó e enorme poder de processamento.

Somos capazes hoje, de atender a grandes exigências do mercado corporativo, a custos baixos, aproveitando todo o ganho de escala que a computação em nuvem proporciona.

Alta velocidade na entrega de serviços contratados neste cluster , agilidade na escalabilidade e baixa latência de conexão são outros diferenciais que somos capazes de oferecer dentro de nossa infraestrutura.

Nosso produtos de DB na nuvem agora são:

• MySQL 5 Cloud
• PostgreSQL Cloud
• Oracle 10g Cloud

  Mais dados sobre estes serviços e informações para contratação instantânea em:

http://shop.bsrsoft.com.br/category.php?id_category=15

Well, seven of us are pretty tired, but quite happy with the Leonid show as viewed from the Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary parking lot  this morning (Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009) .  The beauty of the Allens Pond site are the 360-degree unobstructed  horizons and wonderfully dark skies – especially at 3 am.

The weather cooperated with the wind and temperatures reasonably mild for this time of year.  At different times we had some clouds drift through,  but always had plenty of clear sky as well.  I would guess we had between five and ten meteors that rated an involuntary “wow!” All together, counting all observers, we saw between 25 and 50  meteors – but I wasn’t counting, so I can’t be sure – and I personally missed a lot that others saw.  You do have to be constantly looking up and it has to be in the right place – so there’s a lot of luck involved.  Paul seemed to corral the  most. Others present included Joe, Karen, Sybil,  two folks I don’t know, and myself.

And yes, we did get to see Saturn, Mars, some star clusters and galaxies – but most observing was with the naked eye, not the telescopes. One bonus was using binoculars to look at the trails left by some of the brighter meteors. These stay visible for many seconds and you can see the upper level winds twisting them like something live.

For me, however, the meteor shower was just part of the story. I got to Allens Pond shortly after 1 am. It was kind of shocking to see how much traffic there was in that location at that hour and at this time of year. Three cars were direclty behind me as I passed Horseneck Beach and they all turned off towards Gooseberry. There were another dozen at East Beach and it actually looked like some folks were out of their cars looking for meteors. I had a different agenda.  I wanted to find a handful of clusters I had never seen – or don’t remember seeing – that are all too far south to be easily viewed from my yard.  I think of them as the Dog Clusters because they are all – well, clustered  – around Canis Major.

Click image for larger version.

(Click this link to download a printable, black on white version of this chart -  dogclusters.)

I was using 12X36 Canon IS binoculars and my 60mm Televue scope.  I parked my little Fuma chair near the car ( it served as a nice wind break and gave me a false sense of security) and settled in. (Yes, as I get older I get somewhat concerned about being in isolated spots like this alone at 1 am.)  Absolutely beautiful night. Nearly completely clear at this point and great winter Milky Way with Big Dog in full glory over Buzzards Bay, yapping at the hare and  nipping mighty hunter’s heels.   (And yes, you Latin scholars may scold me for identifying  three stars near the bottom left as the “pups” because they are part of the constellation “Puppis” which really means the “poop” of a ship. Well, I like pups better than poop, and this way I remember them better

First on my list was M41,  the “Little Beehive,” which is pretty much naked eye and very easy in binoculars – just aim at Sirius, then drop down a tad so thi sbrilliant star is at the top of your field and the Little Beehive should start to come into view at the bottom of your field.   Very nice and apt name – especially since the real Beehive should be visible as well and you can check one against the other as I did. The big Beehive still wins, but  the Little Beehive was impressive and will always be on my list to chek whenever visible.

M41 also serves as a starting point for finding the next pair of clusters, a pair I really love.  They are on a line with it that roughly parallels a line fromthe Biog Dog’s eye (Sirius)  to his nose. Sweep eastward a couple of fields and there are a wonderful pair of clusters M47 and M46 – but only M47 is like to “pop” out at you. It’s much brighter. I really like this pair, though,  because M47 is at  about 1700 ly and M46 at 5,000 – and they look it. M46 is  much fainter – gives that “dust of snow” impression in good binoculars, or a small scope -  and  it conveys  a real sense of place – it’s like  taking a cluster like its companion M47 and moving it outward.

It’s easy enugh to find th egeneral region of M59, but a little hard to identify because it blend sin witht he Milky Way. To get in the right neighborhood just mentally draw aline connecting Sirius and Procyon.  (The chart indicates the general direction, but Procyon is out of the picture.)  To know how far to go use the length between the Big Dog’s  eye and nose  as a guide.This is around five degrees (roughly a binocular field) and M50 is almost 10 degrees from Sirius.

M93, the last of this small circle of clusters, is very  easy if you can find the three stars I call “the pups.” The middle of these stars – which in small scopes is a nice double, incidentally – is your guide. M93 just north of it and a tad to the west.

I find these very quickly and looked at them in the TV60, but I had meteors on my mind and didn’t really take the time to study them in depth. I’ll leave that for another night and larger telescope.

we sit in this small cafe in a central bookshop, holding a book and a blackberry, unseen borders between us and I wonder about our differences. 2 completely different types of fruits . like bananas and oranges.well  maybe more like grapes and oranges to be accurate and. you’ll be the grapes , thats a compliment and Ill be the orange as you are un able to compliment me, unless I demand.

why can’t I wonder about our mutual characters? we obviously share some. I have to focus on drawing those from learning our fruits type closer.  I google for our types. the latin determinations are important in your case , just to clarify our family names. fruits do share a few things in common even if looking completely different. flavours that tickles ones tongue when fresh, the fears of over ripping under the sun, the fragility clinging from high trees, the acidity when not happy with the weather around. the ship that brought them from a warm place ti an island that urge their presence. the need to retain as much knowledge within their shells. you withing your thin layer of grape skin , myself in my slightly thicker aromatic cover. your skin transparent and your knowledge is reflected through its variations to the world to pick and taste. mine is hidden under slightly bitter white layer, yet tempting the ones wishing to peel its covers to be sprayed withh my energetic wit. I need you to peel me once in a while from my over-cautious covers. I need to learn words  to spice my zesty drops of citrus flash with other flavours around me. I also need to take a stroll through your berries and blow them around, get them away from their communal stem as if they may explode if not released to small molecules .

your over loaded grapes conscience clustered in layers is opposite to my selfish citrus simple stand. proudly growing from its orange flower , spreading a scent that overwhelms those who stand close to listen to its bloody drops . your turbulent curvy growth covers for the absence of a glorious scent. youre the crimson kind. velvety attracting its fans to listen to its deep tunes. I am unable to escape my origins . I come in shades of orange , but I supply a shallow encounter with taste and so should be only consumed in small portions . your shiny and smooth, gliding around when spread on a plate.  Im shiny and dimple.

I try to hold your hand in that bookshop , surrounded by other fruits and vegetables of the human kind . not completely in ease with the decoration around us , Id rather take you to sit on one of the shelfs on the floor above us. discuss our differences in the poetry section where honest wordswill get me closer to your pallet.

I’ll end my exploration of the clusters in this data set by looking at the 14th largest cluster by contribution value. This cluster is not comprised of movie stars or investment bankers, realtors or health professionals: it is comprised of homemakers in Michigan.

Somehow, the Democrats have managed to get 264 homemakers from a small area in Michigan to cough up $400 each. I’d love to know how that occurred.

That’s enough for this data set. When I find another interesting data set, I’ll publish more.

A friend recently returned from a visit to one of China’s technology clusters, disappointed with the disparity that he saw between their monumental progress and our comparative stagnation.  He remarked that this particular cluster had mushroomed to over 10 million in population, and that the technology enterprises he visited there were every bit as advanced as anything he had seen in the U.S.  He further lamented that these companies’ pricing models for high-tech products far outstripped many in the U.S.

In light of our own President’s visit this week to China, a country that has transformed itself through the engine of capitalism into to a technological and industrial giant, I am left wondering if the global tables of economic freedom are turning.  Might the Chinese business climate in the near future become more free than our own?  My underlying train of thought began by recalling a case study that examined a pair of Chinese state owned enterprises.  These were essentially organs of a communist dictatorship that understands and harnesses the power of capitalism to sustain its political system and its people.  Some other case studies that were swept into my stream of thoughts chronicled the paths of individuals who were educated in the U.S. in engineering and business, and returned home to the People’s Republic of China to form successful enterprises.  To an increasing degree, it seems that the PRC is rewarding innovation and investment.  At the same time, American tax policies are comparatively hostile to manufacturing, and regulatory burdens increase on what often seems a daily basis.

Now, down to some hard data.  The current Index of Economic Freedom for the U.S. is 80.7 (world rank of #6), versus 53.2 for the PRC (world rank of 132).  However, the devil may yet be in the details.  Of the ten factors within this analysis, four in China had improved since 2008 and three had diminished.  In contrast, five of the factors for the U.S. had diminished and only one had improved.

Personal income tax rates in China range from 5% to 40% – more or less similar to the U.S.  However, Chinese corporate income taxes range between 15% and 25% – significantly lower than combined federal and state business income taxes in this country, which average approximately 40%.

Perhaps the most telling factor is that of government size.  The U.S. index was 59.6 versus 88.9 for China (a larger index indicates greater freedom).  Chinese government spending in this analysis was approximately 30% of their GDP, whereas this figure for the U.S. approached 40% – before considering any of the recent stimulus or bailout spending.

While the data still show that the U.S. is well ahead of China in overall economic freedom, a steady march of government takeovers and extraconstitutional decrees by unelected czars could precipitously tip the balance.  What then?  Will the PRC offer a bailout for the bankrupt, but “too-big-to-fail” U.S. government?  True liberty must be economic at its core.  The fruits of people’s labor and investments proceed from free individuals’ choices about how to spend their own time and treasure.  This liberty was won with the blood, tears, toil and sweat of many generations.  It is too precious a thing to sacrifice on the altars of political experimentation and what Thomas Paine described as “power by assumption.”

At Supercomputing 2009, Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of betas for Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 and distributed , Microsoft Office Excel 2010 for the cluster. Together with the recently announced Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta, which helps simplify parallel programming, these advances make it possible for more users to access supercomputing power through familiar technologies and tools such as Microsoft Office Excel, Windows Server and Visual Studio.

            “Until now, the power of high-performance and parallel computing has largely been available to a limited subset of customers due to the complexity of environments and applications, as well as the challenges of parallel programming,” said Vince Mendillo, senior director of High Performance Computing at Microsoft. “Today, we’re seeing performance numbers that rival Linux … ISVs are seeing 30% to 40% performance improvements in the speed of their code on Windows HPC Server.”

            Although multicore systems are becoming ubiquitous, few developers can build parallel applications that truly leverage the available resources. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 will help make parallel programming simpler and more efficient for a broad base of developers across both client and cluster workloads. In addition, by moving Microsoft Office Excel 2010 to the cluster, customers are seeing linear performance scaling of complex spreadsheets – spreadsheets that before would take weeks to complete, and which are now completing their calculations in a few hours.

            Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 improvements include the following:

• Improved scalability with support for deploying, running and managing clusters up to 1,000 nodes;
• New configuration and deployment options such as diskless boot, mixed-version clusters and support for a remote head node database;
• Improved system management, diagnostics and reporting with an enhanced heat map, multiple customizable tabs, an extensible diagnostic framework and the ability to create richer custom reports;
• Improved support for service-oriented architecture (SOA) workloads, automatic restart and failover of broker nodes, and improved management, monitoring, diagnostics and debugging; and
• New ways to accelerate Microsoft Office Excel workbooks such as support for Cluster-Aware User-Defined Functions and the capability to run distributed Excel 2010 for the cluster.

            “Many frontline researchers, analysts and scientists desperately need access to more computational power than they currently have, but find it either difficult or too costly in time to gain access to expanded HPC resources. Windows HPC Server 2008 has been designed to address the needs of those wishing to expand their access to HPC, without requiring them to become computer programming experts,” said Earl Joseph, program VP, high-performance computing, IDC. “Microsoft’s latest investments in HPC and parallelism help to reduce the complexities of supercomputing, in particular making it easier to program and thereby making it more accessible to business, academia and government users.”

www.microsoft.com/hpc

The paper on Clusters & New Economics of Competition by Michael E. Porter, to a great extent, is an extension of his acclaimed piece of work titled ‘The Competitive Advantage of Nations’. The papers talks about Clusters – Geographic Concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field – and how they play a vital role in a nations competitive advantage in a global economy which exists today. Porter states that companies can now tone down input cost disadvantage through global sourcing and essentially breakaway from the traditional notion of low-cost advantages. He talks about how competitive advantage now rests on productive use of inputs and the advantage of continual innovation for sustenance of competitive advantage for organisations and nations alike.

Porter mentions the importance of clusters with numerous examples from across the globe, ranging from the Italian footwear Industry, to California’s Wine industry, to the IT industry in Silicon Valley and so on. The striking feature here is the number of support and supplementary industries that have formed on account of the inherent advantages offered by the success of a fragment of the entire Cluster. Essentially, clusters play a major role in innovation through continual innovation and contribute to the foci of the cluster through education, marketing, supporting through ancillaries and so on. Further, Clusters are a hotbed for competition, which also contributes a great deal to innovation as intensity in competition drives organisations to focus more on innovations in terms of the durability of their offerings and cost-related advantages. Another significant attribute of clusters is the fact that they provide a bottomless pitcher of employees through the development of institutions of professional training and research. Not only does this allow organisations in the clusters to infuse new talent into their operations, it also ensures availability of workforce on an as-and-when basis.

On further articulation, a clear cut live example of Clusters and their contribution to competitive advantage can be seen in the Automobile Industry Cluster in the New Delhi & NCR area. It started with Maruti-Suzuki’s first production facilities in Manesar, Haryana and now accommodates two Maruti-Suzuki plants, a Hero Honda plant, Honda Motorcycles and Scooters facility, and a plethora of component manufacturers in the Gurgaon-Manesar area near New Delhi, and Honda Siel Motors and Yamaha India in Greater Noida on the other side of the capital. The factors that have attributed to this cluster are the sprouting of component manufacturers such as Sona Steering, Minda, Apollo Tyres et al around the Maruti-Suzuki facility in Manesar, and of further support organisations in areas of Delhi such as Mayapuri Industrial Area. The fact is, however, that the cluster was essentially instigated by the Government with the set up of the Maruti-Suzuki production facility in Manesar back in the mid-1980’s and the various tax and real-estate benefits offered by both the Central and State governments. This allowed for the set-up of a large number of component manufacturers since importing components at the pre-liberalisation era was just not a cost-effective option. Given the high demand for engineering graduates and management professionals, a large number of institutions were set up both by the government and private players to meet the demand through a never-ending supply of manpower. This essentially further motivated more Automobile manufacturers to set up shop around the area because of the logistical, cost and manpower advantages. A similar pattern can be seen at Pune, Maharashtra as well, which was primarily instigated by the setting up of the Tata Motors plant and Bajaj Motors plant, where the best of Automobile manufacturers are setting up shop, from Volkswagen to Daimler AG.

To conclude, the competitive advantage offered by clusters is highly beneficial for both the constituents of the clusters as well as the government as a whole. It is evident that most manufacturers can source parts from countries such as China and South Korea, but they stick to Indian component manufacturers because of the plethora of advantages offered by them.

Reference:

Clusters and the New Economics of Competition

** Update:  Here’s the link where you can see the archived webcast.  You’ll need to register first, but then you can download the slides as well as watch the webcast.  The webcast will not be available after February 15th, 2010.  Thanks very much to the sponsors of this presentation!   **

Do you have an hour to learn more about using travel data? Check out this free one-hour webcast scheduled for Monday, November 16th at 1:00 pm EST:

Register for Free Travel Data Webcast

As a participant, you’ll be able put questions to this outstanding panel:

• Debra Reid, U.S. Travel Manager at Shell Oil

• Mary Ann Reichlen,  Senior Manager at Deloitte Services

• Jesal Meswani, VP of Global Commercial Products at MasterCard

• and me.  Debra and Mary Ann are skilled users of travel data – as they should be, given the gigantic size of their firms’ travel programs.  Jesal is a very sharp guy who manages the data reporting product, among others, for MasterCard worldwide.

The free event is compliments of MasterCard and ProMedia.travel Content Solutions, and will be moderated by Elizabeth West of ProMedia.travel

I hope you can make the event.  If not, you’ll be able to view a transcript of the slides, audio and poll questions from the ProMedia.travel website.  I’ll post those details once I have them.

What the heck does baking have to do with travel data reporting, you ask?

It makes for an interesting metaphor.  I used this concept in the speech I gave at the ACTE Canada conference this week in Toronto.  I’ll admit that the skit was a bit hokey, but the points about poor preparation of data, half-baked analysis and hanging Christmas lights on plain-jane data were too good to pass up.

skip

Once I got beyond these process-related problems, we dived into some of the best practices in travel data reporting. The examples I presented involved  spend analysis, policy compliance, supplier negotiations and management recommendations.  If you’d like a copy of the 28-slide deck, please post a comment, or send me an e-mail here.

Yvonne Kerns, CIBC’s Global Travel Manager, and Sean Brooks, Associate Director for Travel Management at Bell Canada were the “real world” co-panelists.  Yvonne spoke about how she tracks average ticket price, and the success she’s had in getting senior management to support stronger compliance to policy.  Sean described the challenges he’s had in dealing with fragmented hotel data, and how he has been able to combine it in a way that outshone some of his hotel suppliers.

Thanks to the excellent ACTE staff in Canada for organizing such a terrific conference!

For the second largest cluster, we need to travel from LA all the way to Connecticut.

This cluster contains hedge fund staff and investment bankers from Connecticut, in that little nook north of New York.

These individuals each contributed over USD $30K to the Democrats.

If I were the Democrats, I’d be asking “Why these companies?”; “Why this amount?”; “Why don’t others do the same?”

Over the past 10 years, I’ve spent much of my time pulling actionable insights out of data. Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this out loud, but I enjoy it.

I’ve recently been experimenting with an approach I’ve developed for identifying clusters of similar transactions within a data set. Seeing every group of clustered transactions within a data set enables one to identify the most interesting clusters, deep dive into why those transactions are clustered and devise tactics to get more clusters if they’re ‘good’ or fewer clusters if they’re ‘bad’.

The approach I’m experimenting with compares every record to every other record for large data sets. This is non-trivial given the exponential growth in the number of comparisons as the dataset grows. Consider for example a data set with 3 million rows of data and 4 columns. To compare each record with every other record may require 36 trillion calculations (3M * 3M * 4). It’s easy to cut this number by more than 1/2 by not comparing each record to itself and by only doing the comparison in one direction, i.e. assuming that comparing A to B is the same as comparing B to A, but that still leaves almost 18 trillion calculations and reducing that number further gets trickier.

I’ll discuss my approach in more detail over the coming posts but let’s take a look at some results:

The maps below show the political contributions made by individuals to political parties in the US in 2010. Let’s imagine that we are working for a particular political party and we want to increase the amount of contributions we receive from individuals. One way of doing this would be to identify groups of similar people who contribute large amounts of money, understand why those people are big contributors, and then attempt to create more of those groups of people across the country. To do this, we’ll look at the base data set, we’ll run it through the clustering algorithm, we’ll identify the top 20 clusters that we want to investigate further and devise tactics for replicating the ‘good’ clusters.

The underlying data set was created by Open Secrets, a fantastic group in the US collecting, cleansing and posting political data.

The above maps provide some interesting tidbits such as in 2010 year-to-date, Puerto Ricans contributed to Republicans, Democrats and Independents whereas Hawaiians prefer to stick with the major parties (note that the data set shows only direct contributions and excludes PAC contributions). Whilst this information is interesting, it is not particularly actionable and doesn’t help us achieve our goal of increasing the amount individuals are contributing to our party.

Now let’s run the data set through the clustering algorithm and look at the clusters:

The following map shows clusters of contributions with a similarity rating of 98%, containing 10 or more transactions, contributing more than USD $10,000 to the coffers of the party (using v0.01a of the software).

This looks better. We can see some interesting information now and we can start asking some questions. What is the large Democrat cluster in LA? Are the Republican clusters in Florida replicable across the country or are they particular the region? It looks like the Democrats in South Texas and Michigan are doing some amazing things. What are they?

But the first question we’ll ask is  ”What are the top 20 clusters by contribution amount and what tactic should we apply to replicate the top cluster?”

(To be continued…)

By the way, the reporting tool used to generate the above charts is Tableau. You can download the Tableau data set used in the above analysis as well as the csv file here. Tableau has a free ‘reader‘ version that you can use to explore the data further. If you have the full version of Tableau you can create your own charts using the data set. I’d appreciate seeing your findings.

Pulsars are tiny, only a few miles across but spin as fast as a blender and sweep the sky with beacons of radiation that make them appear to flash on and off. They have unbelievably strong magnetic fields, are more accurate than atomic clocks and they can even tell aliens just where to find the Earth! Quasars are at the other end of the spectrum. Quasars are huge cores of galaxies with black holes that are called “monsters” and which spit lobes of radiating gas called “DRAGNs.” Quasars are so far away, we see them as they were only in the distant past–meaning they existed only in the early universe, when they may have played a major role in the creation of the galaxies themselves.

Cosmos stuff for the masses
(1/5)

Play all

Bonus: Glorious Dawn REMIXED

This is a really profound post, I was sent this by Root.Man you can find a link to his site in perma links. This video is a bit confrontational in means that a lot of people have been indoctrinated that the “big bang theory” was and is the way the Universe created itself.

Find out how Galaxy are birthed

Find out about how we are fooled into seeing the Galaxy the way we do when it’s really just a bunch of manipulations of light making it appear as if there is huge star clusters and galaxies when they are actually millions of light years away.

Peace
Simranjeet

Ikhebdat.nl is gemaakt voor kinderen. De teksten werden speciaal voor hen geschreven. Moeilijke onderwerpen en moeilijke woorden zijn soms vereenvoudigd, om ze begrijpelijk te maken. De informatie over de aandoeningen is algemeen gehouden. Bedenk dat een aandoening bij iedereen weer anders kan zijn. Voor medische vragen kun je altijd bij een arts terecht.
De site Ikhebdat.nl is gemaakt door het Erfocentrum. Het Erfocentrum geeft algemene informatie over erfelijkheid, erfelijke en/of aangeboren aandoeningen, zwangerschap en medische biotechnologie. Meer informatie over het Erfocentrum vind je op www.erfocentrum.nl.

Deveremos lançar nos próximos dias uma versão alfa, escrita em linguagem C, de um servidor web voltado a rodar aplicações na forma de módulos (inicialmente escritos em C também). Codinome inicial BSRSoft Ane Server App.

Sistemas operacionais: Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Linux Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora e outros em teste.

A licença será a Apache 2 Open Source.

Algumas coisas que podem ser feitas com este servidor:

• Servir páginas HTML simplesmente
• Interação entre usuários via web e módulos rodando localmente ou de maneira distribuida (o servidor terá capacidade de se integrar em um cluster de servidores distribuidos para desempenhar tarefas grandes ou que precisem de altíssima redundância)
• Tanto o servidor quanto seus módulos poderão usar o MySQL como banco de dados local ou remoto de maneira transparente
• Servir como ponto de automação para controle de infraestrutura (servidores, redes, backups, impressão, serviços de segurança etc)
• Interface para aplicações de computação de alto desempenho via web
• o que a imaginação trouxer

O novo servidor de aplicações tem como caracteristicas invioláveis: alta performance, controle de I/O, segurança forte (padrão DoD para processos gerenciados por ele, escalabilidade e gerenciamento descentralizado.

O foco é atender a demandas de empresas de engenharia, empresas de hospedagem/hosting, empresas com infraestrutura complexas de TI e que precisam de automação para mantê-la sob controle, inclusive entre suas filiais espalhadas, aplicações cientificas, aplicações de segurança, cloud computing (computação em nuvem) dentre outros.

Todo o código será disponibilizado em repositório específico e ficará plenamente disponível.

Esperamos ter essa primeira versão alfa disponível em mais alguns dias.

The reading for this week, Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi disproves the idea of randomness in networks and champions the idea of hubs and connectors that function to bring together society. The idea behind linked and being connected to others is not new nor is it phenomenal: it is in our blood. This is our history and thus, inevitable. The Bible clears demonstrates this connection as in the beginning, there was Adam, then Eve, then Cain and Able. After that, humanity arises and creates towns to settle and we develop. Thus, we are all connected or linked in some way. If one is agnostic or believes in science, then think of evolution. People evolved as running from animals to hunting them in groups. Once in groups, they became nomads, and then quite surely, someone decided to settle down in a location, therefore forming a town. Thus a hub is created and with it, streets, other towns, etc…

It is divided into 3 chapters. I will discuss each chapter separately by its part and tie it together at the end. They are all connected; rather, they are components of a larger truth.

The Fifth Link: Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point notices an interesting phenomenon: “sprinkled among every walk of life…are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are connectors” (55). This brings in the idea of connectors as highly relevant components of our social lives. Another way to define connectors is by calling them hubs. These hubs have a large number of links. One can create the analogy of a large city, such as Los Angeles and the suburbs that surrounds it. Many highways enter and go out of Los Angeles, connecting many different cities along the way. This discovery has basically disproven Erdos-Renyi’s theory of random worldview and Watts and Strogatz’s simple circle network model. Social networks exhibit clusters and hubs, both points that demonstrate a worldly rule that applies.

We can also apply the theory of links and connectors/hubs to cyberspace. The World Wide Web is the ultimate space for freedom, an environment that represents and defines the meaning of space without limits, boundaries, nor rules. Anyone can publish their work online and allow anyone to see it. Problem is, there are billions of websites. The question that arises is visibility. On the Web, the “measure of visibility is the number of links. The more incoming links pointing to your Webpage, the more visible it is” (57). As such, only websites that become hubs are highly visible (Amazon, Google). These are hubs: connectors with enormous links to other nodes.

I can create a website, thus it becomes a node. Google has grown, thus it has become a hub. Without a link, both websites exist and move in different worlds, or just space. The internet is as big as the universe, each node moves on its own, until it makes contact. This is the link. My website can function in its own galaxy as networks tend to form a cluster. Clusters are “nodes that are linked only to nodes in their subculture or genre” (61).  As a cluster, it is easier to find a common connection to a hub. For example, if my website is about knee pains, then I would like to create some link to a popular website such as WebMD. This in turn, can allow me to link with Google. In two links, my website has escaped randomness and can be visible.

The Sixth Link: Vilfredo Pareto may be a well known Italian economist, but I feel that his thought process behind the 80/20 Rule is sheer brilliance. It is all around us, and yet, he is the first to notice that it applies to the world. This is Simple Genius: understanding a law within the world that is so visible, and yet, invisible to the eye. 80/20 Rule applies to many things, but is generally regarded as 20 own rest of the 80. This also applies to network as well. It can be proven through a mathematical expression called a power law. In contrast to a bell curve, which is a “distribution rather similar to the peaked distribution characterizing random networks,” (67) the power law is by definition a special kind of mathematical relationship between two quantities. The exact definition is as follows: if one quantity is the frequency of an event, the other is the size of the event, then the relationship has a power law distribution when the frequency of the event decreases at a greater rate than the size increases. In layman terms, think of 20% of the population ruling 80% of the world.

Power laws basically functions to prove mathematically the fact that in most “real networks the majority of nodes have only a few links and that these numerous tiny nodes coexist with a few big hubs, nodes with an anomalously high number of links” (70). Again, this relates to Gladwell’s idea of connectors, but proving quantitatively that it exists within the realm of the World Wide Web. It demonstrates that real networks are not random at all, but exist under the power law. The interesting idea that Barabasi proposes is that in the beginning, nodes tend to be chaotic and without any form or order. However, through time, this disorder turned into order through self-organization. Under the theory of phase transitions, real networks demonstrate self creation from disorder into the 80/20 Rule. Barabasi’s idea is highly compelling, as he demonstrates quantitative analysis and by using the Web, a blank space which is like a universe unto itself, to explain a simple law that applies to the world. Everyone is intricately linked, because we are social beings. Networking is only a function of humanity, which always existed, but has now been proven through the power law. A question that arises is why do hubs and links form and how does it form in such a manner that to the naked eye is so random and chaotic, and yet, has order.

The Seventh Link: Erdos and Renyi’s model of networks rely on two principles. First is the idea that all nodes are fixed and remains unchanged throughout the network’s life. Second is that all nodes are equivalent. However, this is obviously not the case as there exists hubs/connectors, links, and change from disorder to order through self-organization. To understand how it does this, we must understand that the web is constantly growing. It is changing and growing. This is quite self-explanatory. There has been exponential growth of websites on the World Wide Web. As there is growth, we can safely disprove the static nature of Erdos-Renyi’s model of networks. We also do not randomly decide on which websites to link. We choose based upon our knowledge and social upbringing. We prefer certain websites over others because we are comfortable and familiar with that certain product. Thus, rises the concept of hubs. Barabasi brings up the idea of preferential attachment: “when choosing between two pages, one with twice as many links as the other, about twice as many people link to the more connected page. While our individual choices are highly unpredictable, as a group we follow strict patterns” (85). In many sense, this is true. We are all sheep and follow the leader.

In truth, randomness does not really exist unless it is the role of a die. Linking between networks is not random. Though unmentioned as third criteria, I believe that popularity and attractiveness plays an important role in the addition of links and creation of hubs. Webpages that have more links are more likely to be “linked to again” (86). Thus, there exists first person advantage. Older nodes have greater chances to become bigger and eventually rise as a hub. As a senior member within a link, this node has greater links and more nodes want to be linked to that certain node. Barabasi has given compelling evidence that real networks are not random, but constantly evolving and growing, attracting more links through the legitimacy of the power law.

We are living in a complex world and yet, guided by the invisible hand or law that is, in my opinion, inexplicable. The idea of real networks applies not only to websites, but to humanity in large. I believe that Barabasi’s point is that humans are social beings and we are followers. There are different people: some are leaders and some are followers. This difference guides the principle of 80/20 Rule as well as the power law. Barabasi has done something quite remarkable: take a simple, obvious, and yet invisible rule, and proved it scientifically and gave it a name. Kudos.

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NAS vendor Isilon^® Systems announced that Geotrace, a reservoir services provider, has deployed Isilon IQ to power a robust suite of seismic data processing and analysis applications used to accelerate worldwide oil and gas discovery. Using Isilon scale-out NAS, featuring its OneFS^® operating system, Geotrace has created a single global namespace for both its Unix and Linux-based cluster compute environments, streamlining seismic data access to reduce data processing times from weeks to days. With Isilon, Geotrace can complete more projects in less time and with greater accuracy, all while requiring less than one full-time worker to manage the system.

            “Our seismic data processing and analysis operations serve oil and gas leaders around the world, meaning our workflow is both mission-critical and very time-sensitive,” said Matt Gaskamp, data center operations manager, Geotrace. “We don’t have time to manage multiple storage systems and perform the ongoing data migration necessary with traditional storage. With Isilon, all of our data is in one, immediately accessible location, allowing our engineers to work collaboratively around the clock and get more done, faster, with less cost.”

            Prior to using Isilon IQ, Geotrace employed separate traditional storage systems to support the two primary components of its workflow: seismic data processing and analysis. When Geotrace moved to a data center model leveraging both Unix and Linux-based cluster compute environments each running hundreds of servers to process and analyze data simultaneously, these traditional systems were incapable of providing the single global namespace or linear scaling of performance and capacity necessary to power Geotrace’s workflow effectively.

            By turning to Isilon, Geotrace unified both its massive compute clusters onto a single, high-performance, highly scalable, shared pool of storage, enabling engineers to access data seamlessly between clusters at all stages of the workflow without having to migrate data back and forth, increasing productivity and accelerating time to results. With Isilon IQ, Geotrace eliminated the costly and time-consuming manual data migrations and lengthy scaling delays common when using traditional HPC storage alongside traditional SAN or NAS.

            “Traditional storage systems lack the performance, scalability and ease of use to effectively power seismic processing and analysis, forcing today’s most innovative oil and gas companies to deploy disparate, disconnected systems or find a better alternative,” said Sam Grocott, senior director of product management, Isilon Systems. “Geotrace is one of many leading-edge companies that have found an improved approach by deploying scale-out NAS. With Isilon, Geotrace unified its workflow and increased operational efficiency, demonstrating that with Isilon IQ, innovative organizations can do more – better – with less.”

www.geotrace.com

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