Slashdot Mirror

Take a look at IBM's Many Eyes (21 different visualizations) -- maybe there's one that will fit the bill.

Here are a few examples of visualizations about "Cisco" (I'm not familiar with Cisco's config file and ACLs so I don't know if these are relevant):
CISCO.COM web site IA network diagram (level 2 & 3)
CISCO.COM web site IA treemap

Cisco device types

# of Devices using a version of Cisco's IOS

Oh, snap 21 types of visualizations

Many Eyes by IBM offers 21 types of visualizations

Many Eyes by IBM offers 21 types of visualizations

In the early sixties. It stopped in the early eighties and has been sort of loafing about the place ever since, spending more time reminiscing about "the good old days" than anything else, and barely paying the rent. (I've been keeping score.) Nevertheless there are some signs it may actually be proceeding at a breakneck pace while we're not looking...

The truth is that by the year 2100, speculative theories will be so advanced and so reliably misguided that we'll be able to calculate anything and solve any social problem simply by asking futurists a question and assuming the opposite.

As to the grandparent post -- just because I started with Java 1.0 doesn't mean I assume that the JVM hasn't changed. I've been redoing my tests with each Java release that came out to see if my old assumptions still applied.

I'm a professional programmer, not some kid hacking code in a basement.

I expect a professional Java programmer to know that "Raw object allocation is EXPENSIVE" is WRONG and OLD information: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp01274/index.html

"Performance advice often has a short shelf life; while it was once true that allocation was expensive, it is now no longer the case. In fact, it is downright cheap, and with a few very compute-intensive exceptions, performance considerations are generally no longer a good reason to avoid allocation. Sun estimates allocation costs at approximately ten machine instructions. That's pretty much free -- certainly no reason to complicate the structure of your program or incur additional maintenance risks for the sake of eliminating a few object creations.

Of course, allocation is only half the story -- most objects that are allocated are eventually garbage collected, which also has costs. But there's good news there, too. The vast majority of objects in most Java applications become garbage before the next collection. The cost of a minor garbage collection is proportional to the number of live objects in the young generation, not the number of objects allocated since the last collection. Because so few young generation objects survive to the next collection, the amortized cost of collection per allocation is fairly small (and can be made even smaller by simply increasing the heap size, subject to the availability of enough memory)."

There are cases where it makes sense to use your own allocator, generally for big objects, but the blanket advice you gave will cause more harm than good.

Intel was the top contributor to Linux 3.0 (by lines) (source)

IBM is in there, too at #8

Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds

Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds

Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.

If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)

Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?

• Broadcom
• Atheros (are they are part of Qualcomm now? You can check out Qualcomm, part of "Qualdroid")
• Marvell

all made the top Linux contributor list, too.

I'll assume that other posters will cover the Red Hat and Novell bases.

Geez people. Why not do some research before jumping on the bashing bandwagon?

After 5 seconds of Googling (give or take, didn't have a stopwatch):
http://searchconsumerization.techtarget.com/Apple-seeks-to-better-iPad-iPhone-security-via-FIPS-140-2-compliance

"Apple has submitted three cryptographic modules that are in the modules in process queue for FIPS 140-2 compliance..."

Also, there are apps for that.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/04/prweb3829534.htm
http://www-05.ibm.com/no/news/events/tgif/tgif_lotus_in_a_mobile_world_070510.pdf

I used to respect this site and it's posters.

Hmmm ... google Hello world powerpc, click on the first link and scroll a bit down until you find the assembly. Now you only have to find a powerpc assembler and linker, and you're done.

... and by "minor app developer" you mean a Stanford Research Institute spinoff, where it was created from over 10 years of AI research by DARPA on the CALO/PAL projects, which were in fact the largest AI projects in history? You might remember DARPA from some of their other projects. Like ARPANET amongst others. If you expect to equal 10 years of DARPA AI research and development in a 3-week coding project, well good luck with that.

By minor app developer I was referring more to the fact that others than Apple could easily have bought it as well ($150m is pocket change), if they found it that revolutionary. It is cool technology, implementation and marketing, but not that far off what others have that people are making it out to be.

The decades of world leading research into "AI", voice/natural language processing, machine learning and natural user interfaces from the likes of IBM, Microsoft Research and more recently Google, and others, is hardly a 3-week coding project. But if that is how you'd like to think the technology behind Siri stack up to what others have, be my guest.

Wow, we're on Slashdot......almost like being On The Cover of the Rolling Stone.

Answers to various questions and comments:
- We support the Linux toolchain; compilers, debuggers, etc., fortunate to have some of the original gcc team. Ported pieces of various kernels to TOMI Aurora to make certain we had not left anything out and to test the memory manager. Aurora was for use in a tablet type device.
- TOMI Borealis was optimized for Big Data and unstructured data apps like MapReduce that choke at the Memory Wall. Linux could probably be ported without too much difficulty. Most massively parallel installations will use something really light weight instead.
- Potential users said give them more integer cores instead of adding FPU. We gladly cede the FP world to Itanium.
- For raw FP horsepower within a reasonable power budget, its tough to beat Nvidia's GPU approach. That is probably why 3 of the top 10 supercomputers are GPU accelerated. http://www.top500.org/ GPU-type architectures will likely be the future of scientific computing. Venray is focused on Memory Wall limited areas such as Big Data.
- From the computer architecture perspective, the distinction between Big Data and Small Data is whether the datasets will primarily fit within the onboard caches. Video compression, graphics acceleration, encryption, and much of LINPAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINPACK) would be classed as Small Data since most of the computing can be done without leaving the caches (high locality). Legacy architectures choke on Big Data since the datasets overflow the caches and there is much much less data reuse.
- MapReduce is important because it is currently the most visible Big Data application thanks to Google. http://research.google.com/archive/mapreduce.html
- Venray believes Big Data applications are the future of computing. So does McKinsey Consulting. http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Technology_and_Innovation/Big_data_The_next_frontier_for_innovation We leave it to others to accelerate MS Office and Call of Duty.
- The future of Big Data appears to be RAM resident, not disk, not even flash. (See Fred Ho's work at IBM.) https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/fredho66/?lang=en_us
- re: Mitsubish 3DRAM and other similar ventures, iRAM, Exacute, Gilgamesh, etc....they embedded DRAM into logic. Contrast with TOMI that embeds CPU cores into DRAMs.....our benefits are performance and particularly cost: http://www.edn.com/photo/294/294788-microprocessor_vs_memory_transistors_graph.jpg
- We chose a modified RISC architecture rather than a special purpose one such as Gilgamesh in order to make programming simpler with well understood Linux tools such as gcc. Submit your gcc C, C++, or Fortran to http://www.venraytechnology.com./ Statistics are returned in standard dGen format.
- TSV (through silicon vias) and HMC (hybrid memory cube) are valid attempts to push back the Memory Wall. Discussed in Part 1 for EDN. http://www.edn.com/article/520059-The_future_of_computers_Part_1_Multicore_and_the_Memory_Wall.php Decision may be determined by cost.
- Would love to dispense with caches because they add transistors. 4K data and 4K instruction caches sped us up about 10x. Unlike legacy architectures, TOMI cache lines load in a single DRAM cycle.
- Yes love Raspberry Pi. http://www.raspberrypi.org/
- Quad-

So Unix has ASLR, DEP, compiler exception handling bounds checking?

VMS is the only other OS that has DEP support fully. XP has partial support by SP 2.

Checklist wise Windows is the most secure kernel

I tend to doubt that. Have you checked out PaX and Grsecurity? I personally use Gentoo Hardened. It's a source-based distro so everything in userland is also built with SSP which provides the bounds checking (one nice thing about having the source). It also includes support for SELinux (see the Resources section of that first link I provided).

Unrelatedly: have they/will they publish a paper on this? I can't find anything mentioning a paper in the press releases.

The actual paper was published today in Science:
Sebastian Loth[1,2], Susanne Baumann[1,3], Christopher P. Lutz[1], D. M. Eigler[1], Andreas J. Heinrich[1] (Affiliations: [1] IBM Almaden Research Division, [2] Max Planck Institute, [3] University of Basel) Bistability in Atomic-Scale Antiferromagnets Science 13 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6065 pp. 196-199 DOI: 10.1126/science.1214131.

The abstract is:

Control of magnetism on the atomic scale is becoming essential as data storage devices are miniaturized. We show that antiferromagnetic nanostructures, composed of just a few Fe atoms on a surface, exhibit two magnetic states, the Néel states, that are stable for hours at low temperature. For the smallest structures, we observed transitions between Néel states due to quantum tunneling of magnetization. We sensed the magnetic states of the designed structures using spin-polarized tunneling and switched between them electrically with nanosecond speed. Tailoring the properties of neighboring antiferromagnetic nanostructures enables a low-temperature demonstration of dense nonvolatile storage of information.

Some big names are on this paper (Don Eigler is a pioneer of STM; responsible for the famous "IBM written with xenon atoms" proof-of-concept, and along with Lutz worked on the also-famous "quantum corrals").

Unrelatedly: have they/will they publish a paper on this? I can't find anything mentioning a paper in the press releases.

The actual paper was published today in Science:
Sebastian Loth[1,2], Susanne Baumann[1,3], Christopher P. Lutz[1], D. M. Eigler[1], Andreas J. Heinrich[1] (Affiliations: [1] IBM Almaden Research Division, [2] Max Planck Institute, [3] University of Basel) Bistability in Atomic-Scale Antiferromagnets Science 13 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6065 pp. 196-199 DOI: 10.1126/science.1214131.

The abstract is:

Control of magnetism on the atomic scale is becoming essential as data storage devices are miniaturized. We show that antiferromagnetic nanostructures, composed of just a few Fe atoms on a surface, exhibit two magnetic states, the Néel states, that are stable for hours at low temperature. For the smallest structures, we observed transitions between Néel states due to quantum tunneling of magnetization. We sensed the magnetic states of the designed structures using spin-polarized tunneling and switched between them electrically with nanosecond speed. Tailoring the properties of neighboring antiferromagnetic nanostructures enables a low-temperature demonstration of dense nonvolatile storage of information.

Some big names are on this paper (Don Eigler is a pioneer of STM; responsible for the famous "IBM written with xenon atoms" proof-of-concept, and along with Lutz worked on the also-famous "quantum corrals").

Is anyone aware of how "big" they are

An actual STM instrument is pretty big. About the size of, say, a mini-fridge. But the majority of that is the computer to drive the system, the readout electronics, and the enclosure (to dampen out vibrations, establish vacuum, etc.). The actual readout tip is pretty small: a nano-sized tip attached to ~100 micron 'diving board' assembly.

A related problem with STM is that it's a serial process: you have a small tip that you're scanning over a surface. This makes readout slow. However in a separate project, IBM (and others) has been working on how to solve that: the idea is to use a huge array of tips that scan the surface in parallel (IBM calls it millipede memory). This makes access faster since you can basically stripe the data and read/write in parallel, and it makes random seeks faster since you don't have to move the tip array as far to get to the data you want. It increases complexity, of course, but modern nano-lithography is certainly up to the task of creating arrays of hundreds of thousands of micron-sized tips with associated electronics.

Using tip arrays would make the read/write parts more compact (as compared to having separate parallel STMs, I mean). The enclosure and driving electronics could certainly be miniaturized if there were economic incentive to do so. There's no physical barrier preventing these kinds of machines from being substantially micronized. As others have pointed out, the first magnetic disk read/write systems were rather bulk, and now hard drives can fit in your pocket. It's possible the same thing could happen here. Having said that, current data storage techniques have a huge head-start, so for something like this to catch up to the point where consumers will want to buy it may take some time.

"Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, will provide push-button Reset and Refresh in Windows 8"

You mean like Lenovo One Button Restore

"Windows 8 will include a new tool called recimg.exe, which allows you to create a hard drive image that Refresh will use"

You mean similar to CloneZilla?

You didn't hurt my feelings. I haven't written a line of COBOL since the summer of 1988. Rather, I was objecting to arrant nonsense masquerading as authoritative-sounding statements. That kind of thing can harm the reputation of Slashdot, you know.

all ISAMs are relational databases

Any defense you attempt of that proposition will only land you deeper in the tall grass. ISAM can't be "used as" a relational database because it lacks the fundamental facilities.

The most widely accepted informed definition of the relational model is the three-part test Codd described in 1978: structure, operations, and constraints. ISAM includes no algebra and very little in the way of constraint enforcement. It also fails most of Codd's 12 rules.

I think you might mean that ISAM files have keys, and that ISAM files can be arranged in ways that mimic normal forms. The comparison is superficially appealing and logically vacant. Sorry.

However, secure code does not use the SQL front end as such.

Do please tell. I'd especially like to know what "as such" means in that sentence. Googling "isam db2 site:ibm.com" fails to turn up anything relevant. Searching DB2 Documentation for "isam"s turned up nothing.

I'm not against the idea of using stored procedures.... So long as the stored procedures are required to check the format of their parameters

No, that's unnecessary for purposes of security. Again, one of the three legs of the relational model is constraints. The DBMS is perfectly capable — more capable than the stored procedure, more than the application — of preventing inconsistent data from entering the database. It can't ensure correctness; no mere machine can. But only the DBMS can enforce referential integrity and declared constraints versus other contemporaneous processes.

But you're right that if the webserver can only execute stored procedures and has no other rights in the DBMS, then the data are absolutely safe from arbitrary manipulation through SQL injection. (Yes, I understand the procedure could be written to execute its parameters as code. But anyone letting data in any form be executed in a web environment might as well start looking for other work now. Why wait until the fan gets dirty?)

By contrast, no file system offers any such protection. If the webserver can access any part of the file, it can access the whole file. Own the server and you own the data.

SQL is too generic for a secure system

I don't know what that means. I can't even venture a guess. I guess Lisp is too generic too for a secure system. That explains why Paul Graham is sleeping under bridges instead of funding startups.

I'm amazed ... you're defending a COBOL as not being crippled ... you can do absolutely anything, just need the APIs

I'm not defending COBOL. I can think of a dozen problems with it. I'm ridiculing the crippled/generic taxonomy you proposed. C has no I/O capability and no memory management save static storage and the stack. What can anyone do with such a toy? Exactly the same is true for Java. COBOL on the other hand, like Pascal, at least defines I/O in the language. Even with the stdio library, can you do in C what COBOL does in 64 lines?

Your basic assertion seems to be that a simple system is less vulnerable than a complicated one. While that's partly true, I have to remind you of Einstein's dictum to make things as simple as possible but no simpler. When you recommend eschewing tcp/ip as "too complex", I see an invitation to reinvent it badly. It's not easy to improve on the socket mode

"Oracle issues rare out-of-band update for Apache DDoS vulnerability"

"This is only the fifth time Oracle has issued an alert outside its routine quarterly patch cycle since introducing its own version of Patch Tuesday at the start of 2005."

That would be Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday". Oracle doesn't call it "out-of-band".

"Adobe Releases Out-of-Band Patch"

Adobe called it a "Security bulletin", and judging from when Adobe releases updates for Flash Player, I'm not even seeing a regular schedule to classify it as "out-of-band" as Microsoft defines it.

"Installing out-of-band updates for IBM BladeCenter devices using Telnet fails"

They're actually talking about delivery of patches via FTP and TFTP. Another talks about SNMP as the method. That is out-of-band and not what Microsoft is doing.

If anything about Microsoft releasing a patch off-schedule is "out-of-band" it is that they call special attention to it via press release rather than otherwise silently informing people via Windows Update. And that's assuming that they don't issue press releases anyway that usually get ignored by the press when they're on the regular schedule. It's not delivering the patch out-of-band, it's informing the public out-of-band, i.e. via an alternate band of communication. But it isn't delivery of the patch; that still occurs through the normal channel: Windows Update. It's conflating security "update" as a deliverable fix with security "update" as bulletin about the availability of the fix via the usual channels.

And that's the closest to a concession you'll get out of me on this.

Find an independent source that doesn't source or reference Microsoft and its off-schedule releases. And not one you make yourself, either.

Ok then,

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/17/oracle-issues-rare-out-of-band-update-for-apache-ddos-vulnerability/ "Oracle issues rare out-of-band update for Apache DDoS vulnerability"

http://www.simplysecurity.com/2011/09/27/adobe-releases-out-of-band-patch/ "Adobe Releases Out-of-Band Patch"

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/director/v6r1x/index.jsp?topic=/director.tbs_6.1/fqm0_r_tbs_um_installing_out_of_band_updates_for_bc_using_telnet_fails.html "Installing out-of-band updates for IBM BladeCenter devices using Telnet fails"

For example ruby http://code.google.com/p/android-ruby/ or even http://www.robmiles.com/journal/2011/1/7/running-ruby-on-windows-phone.html. It seems there is a bit of interest http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ruby/index.html?ca=drs-.

It seems that Ruby is becoming the default beginners language, with compact easily readable code. So go Ruboto http://ruboto.org/ interesting video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3074P4juuXs.

For the C++ compilers that generate the high-level instruction set, pointers are, as far as I know, 128-bit.

According to The Fine Manual for the IBM i C++ compiler, you get two data models - P128 with 128-bit pointers, and LLP64 with 64-bit pointers (and, I'm guessing from what LLP64 usually means, 32-bit long int and 64-bit long long int).

No, they didn't. short int is a type the range of which is a possibly-improper subset of the range of int and int is a type the range of which is a possibly-improper subset of the range of long int. I.e., the ANSI C specification does not prevent an implementation of ANSI C from having short, int, and long int from all being 16, or all being 32, or all being 64. It also doesn't prevent a pointer from not fitting into any integral data type (C on the IBM i operating system has, I think, 128-bit pointers).

The standard requires a ranking char<=short<=int<=long<=long long, so, yes, they could be all the same (but, short can not be larger than int, for example). But, any comp/arch that doesn't provide a base 8/16/32/64 is impractical.

Inconvenient, but not completely impractical; presumably somebody uses C on the descendants of the Univac 1100 series in order for Unisys to continue to offer it. In practice, on architectures other than that and oddball stuff such as DSPs, you're going to get 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit integral data types.

Also, char is mandated to be 8 bits.

No, it's mandated to be "large enough to store any member of the basic execution character set". (Yes, that's a direct quote from ISO/IEC 9899:1999 section 6.2.5 "Types".)

So, to provide the size coverage and honor the ranking requirement, this pretty much locks in char==8,short==16,int==32.

Except where it doesn't. Most programmers will probably not encounter cases where it doesn't, but they do exist.

But, if you're going to cover a 64 bit number, which most programmers expect to be "long long",

...except for programmers using MSVC, where it's _I64 or something such as that.

As to IBM's 128 bit address (which model specifically? some extension of S/390 or of their power* series?),

The AS/400 and iSeries and System i and, now, Power Series. Those machines have a very high-level "virtual" instruction set that is never directly executed, and have two different "real" instruction sets, the older ones having a System/3x0-like CISC instruction set and the newer ones having a Power-architecture instruction set that has some extensions (for example, tag bits and, I think some fixed-point-decimal-arithmetic assists). The lowest level of the OS is compiled into the "real" instruction set, and it includes code that translates the high-level "MI" instruction set into whatever the "real" instruction set is so that programs compiled into the "MI" instruction set can be executed. That lowest level was written in, I think, a PL/I-like language for the older CISC machines, and rewritten in C++ for the newer Power-architecture machines; I suspect that in the C++ compiler used for that purpose pointers and long int are 64 bit. For the C++ compilers that generate the high-level instruction set, pointers are, as far as I know, 128-bit.

they would need to have an integer type of the same size. If they've gone to the trouble of doing this, they have quite probably implemented an ALU that is just as wide.

I don't think so. Note that

1. not all of the bits in those pointers necessarily participate in address arithmetic;
2. "MI" instructions that use those pointers probably translate into multiple "real" instructions.

   That is, you need to have something that can index through a byte array. If you can't, then the arch is some segmented variant

   Which I think it might be. I think MI pointers also contain other gunk, so it's not as if you can have objects of size 2^128 bytes.

IBM has a traffic system in Stockholm that is easing congestion.

Just yesterday (I think) there was an article on here about an IBM system for tracking food from source to consumer in China.

IBM's Jeopardy-winning Watson system is now doing medical records processing as mentioned in the last item.

Are all these things in widespread use? No, not yet. They still require money to implement. However, from a technology point of view, they are available.

And here's their predictions from the end of 2007, which have one year left to come true:

It will be easy for you to be green and save money doing it

Arguably yes in some cases, but not for any of the "smart grid" reasons the explanatory text talks about.

The way you drive will be completely different ... The cities you live in will find a cure for congestion using intelligent traffic systems that can make real-time adjustments to traffic lights and divert traffic to alternate routes with ease.

Nope.

You are what you eat, so you will know what you eat ... Advancements in computer software and wireless radio sensor technologies will give you access to much more detailed information about the food you are buying and eating. You will know everything from the climate and soil the food was grown in, to the pesticides and pollution it was exposed to, to the energy consumed to create the product, to the temperature and air quality of the shipping containers it traveled through

Sounds cool, but nope. All I know about my imported fruit is the "grown in Chile" sticker.

Your cell phone will be your wallet, your ticket broker, your concierge, your bank, your shopping buddy, and more

Arguably coming close.

Doctors will get enhanced “super-senses” to better diagnose and treat you ... An avatar – a 3D representation of your body – will allow doctors to visualize your medical records in an entirely new way, so they can click with the computer mouse on a particular part of the avatar, to trigger a search of your medical records and retrieve information relevant to that part of your body, instead of leafing through pages of notes.

Pretty sure this ain't happening.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/s-hashing/index.html#h5

Note from the history at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/04/r-3190/the_role_of_enterprise_generation_language.pdf, the origin of EGL (once called 4GL) goes back to the 1980s.

Found it! It was called Sash.

We get at least one of these overhyped materials science articles each month. This time, someone has figured out how to deposit a garnet layer in a wafer fab. This is blown up into "photonic computing real soon now". It's not.

There's a lot of work in progress (PowerPoint) on optical on-chip interconnects. This is not "photonic computing". It's clusters of CPUs with a network of optical interconnects, all on one IC. The CPUs are still made of transistors. IBM has a very active research program in this area. But it's a long way from working. There are optical switching elements that work experimentally, but nothing ready for volume manufacturing yet. The optical interconnects themselves aren't considered to be the big problem.

So far, most of the proposed approaches involve un-buffered circuit switched networks. An optical connection is set up from CPU 1 to CPU 2 by electrical means, and then data is blasted across it. Circuit setup time is long compared to the data rate. So this is for long messages within a cluster, not cache synchronization. Think (inevitably) Beowulf cluster on a chip, not thousand-CPU shared memory microprocessors. The technology may also be useful as a network optical switch.

Short version: when this all works, servers get more densely packed.

MSSQL may currently run on Itanium but support is rapidly being dropped.. Not sure about DB2 but i doubt it runs on Itanium..

It does run on HP-UX Itanium systems, but doesn't run on Linux Itanium systems. The latter might not be all that surprising, given that the majority of Itanium systems come from HP; if you want to run Linux rather than HP-UX, you have more choices, so I suspect relatively few Linux servers are Itanium boxes.

MSSQL may currently run on Itanium but support is rapidly being dropped.. Not sure about DB2 but i doubt it runs on Itanium..

It does run on HP-UX Itanium systems, but doesn't run on Linux Itanium systems. The latter might not be all that surprising, given that the majority of Itanium systems come from HP; if you want to run Linux rather than HP-UX, you have more choices, so I suspect relatively few Linux servers are Itanium boxes.

R is my personal favorite but you're going to have to get down and dirty with some high level programming (scripting). Check out the data import package (you would probably export your spreadsheets to flat txt files and import although the functionality is ever increasing). There's no user interface in this suggestion ... what there is, however, is a massive collection of packages for statistical analysis. Very well maintained, constantly updated and ever expanding.

The other suggestion has a better GUI but is really heavyweight. WEKA has helped me time and time again perform advanced statistical calculations on data sets and it's in Java so runs on just about anything. Their interface occasionally improves too, they now have an explorer that I use to prep data and remove outliers/null data (don't worry, this isn't climate data). It's well documented.

These (probably) require an intermediate data transformation step but are open source and extensively supported. Any examples of what you wanted to do? Simple stuff like standard deviation or complex stuff like principle component analysis (PCA)? I guess if it was just simple stuff, that'd be built into Excel, right? Maybe your problems are simple enough to just need a good macro writer to tackle? Whatever happens, good luck!

With IBM, you just illustrated my point. Let's see:

IBM profits in 2000: 8.1 billion (source)
IBM profits in 2010: 14.8 billion (source)

Your chart shows IBM has been rewarded for it's growth. MICROSOFT GREW EVEN FASTER THAN IBM (from 9b to 24b during the same period).

Yet you say the problem is Microsoft? Really?

Hmm ... interesting :D

Babies conceived in October, 1938 would have been born in the middle of 1939.

According to this, it doesn't appear to have made much difference.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/us-births-1936-to-2000/versions/1

Well, most of that depends on how "Cloud" and "Mainframe" are defined.

IBM for example is pushing their Mainframes to do Cloud services (zEnterprise etc, as mentioned in the Article or here for example)

"Mainframe" is basically a definition of Hardware/OS for me. "Cloud" on the other hand is more the Network/Software layer.

There is no real reason why http/soap/whaterver "Cloud" services have to be served by Intel hardware, they can just as well be served by mainframes. And just as the "Cloud" connect traditional software and applications from PCs onto mobile phones and more and more different "client" devices, it can also use more and more "server" devices.

Does copyleft mean that if you use something what you release has to also be open source and free?

Yes, specifically OpenJDK is under the GPLv2.

Does that mean that Oracle is actually suing Google to be more open in their implementation rather than shut it down?

While I wouldn't put it that way, technically yes.

However, the real reason is Oracle wants Google to pay royalties to them like all phones that use JavaME do.

Do we know why they won't open source the compliance tools?

Because they make money from it?

Does that effectively prevent other implementations of Java from existing?

No, other implementations exist, such as IBM's version. JRockIt was another, but BEA was bought by Oracle before Sun was.

Do we know why Oracle wants that?

See: Sun Microsystems, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation

In other words, Sun (and their successor in interest Oracle) want to control the platform to prevent fragmentation, and they likely perceive open source systems not under their control as being likely to fragment it.

I could be wrong though.

Linux actually has it better over Windows and OS/X in that there is a well-defined place to dump your user's configuration that is *not* part of the Application, so the users don't clobber each other and the configuration stays even if the application is removed. This is to put it in ~/.appname. Windows suffers from a *lot* of potential locations (due to everything being writable at one time), while OS/X has a misguided attempt to put writable data into the application directory.

Putting .config files in the user's home directory is so 2001. Please stop it. If you're to believe one of the many specifications out there, like the XDG Base Directory Specification, then you should be storing user configuration files in ~/.config/blahblah so you're not filling up the user's home directory with crap.

Any nerd can fap to scat pr0n.

This woman has the power to order the upgrade of Watson to achieve sapience.

I don't have much experience with the post-IBM models, though, so I can't claim things haven't changed.

You can still easily buy factory-refurbished IBM ones at bargain prices.

Or they could do what IBM did with Watson and have a more sophisticated search routine.

They're more linked than you think. IBM Lotus Symphony is now based on OO.o 3x code, has been since 2009. Now I believe 3.3 or at least 3.2 after the early-2011 Symphony FixPack. Other than the IBM-built UI, a lot of Symphony is open source or built on open source. Even the UI is based on Eclipse. IBM added some import/export filter improvements, which I think they gave back to the community. If they didn't then, they did 4 months ago, when IBM donated the entire Symphony codebase and rights to Apache. Also reported right here on Slashdot, which is of course why nobody here seems to know that.

I strongly prefer Symphony for everyday use over LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org (essentially indistinguishable until recently, from a user and UI perspective). I like the tabbed interface a whole lot better than having a bunch of windows running around. We geeks castigated IE for years until they adopted tabbed browsing; how come we meekly accept non-tabbed office suite interfaces? I've got LibreOffice on my PCs, but I also have Symphony, and I have Symphony set as the default for all ODF formats and Microsoft Office formats that are supported by Symphony.

I'm working on a novel. Writing in in Symphony. Chapter I'm writing is in one tab, other chapters for referbacks are in others, character notes and plot notes, dialog snippets in yet others. Just more intuitive than different windows. Also, each new tab eats less resources than a full new window. For regular everyday life stuff, the same tabbed interface helps with a budget spreadsheet in one tab and reference docs in others. Sure, could do this in separate windows. But we could all be using single-page non-tabbed browsers too.

Symphony does not include the OpenOffice.org Base, Math, nor Draw modules. If I need them (unlikely), I have LibreOffice's improved versions of them to use. The only two features (arguably one feature) from OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice I miss sometimes is the Open Read-Only option in the file dialogs, and the toolbar button to switch from editing to Read-Only mode. In Symphony the only way I've found to open something read-only is to deliberately open it first in Symphony, Microsoft Office, or LibreOffice, and then open it a second time. The second time will be read-only due to the file lock.

I'd love to see the Symphony interface and other enhancements become the new UI for OpenOffice.org, or perhaps "Apache SymphonyOffice" to get away from the "we're not the now-who-cares OpenOffice commercial company which is why we need the stupid .org in our actual product name" problem. Bake Base, Draw, Math back into it along with some of the features that IBM took out (R/O pretty please?). You get a strong alternative to Microsoft Office, with an updated UI compared to LibreOffice. Rather than the confusing situation of LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org being identical in appearance (yeah, minor toolbar changes) and a confused outside-the-geekosphere public. LibreOffice and Symphony would be different enough to attract different audiences. Somewhere down the road they might even be able to work together again, because their products wouldn't be looking 99% identical and thus direct competitors with no reason for both to exist. The Symphony changeover would give that reason.

From IBM's Oct. 2005 Best practices for large Lotus Notes mail files: "...you should advise your users to file documents from their Inbox to other folders, to keep it as small as possible..."

These guys probably believe that if they win they will collect royalties for every copy of tzdata distributed for the next 150 years. Instead, a cleanroom version would be rapidly produced based on primary sources. The initial version may be short on historical data but it would eventually be filled out: all the data has been published by governments. This may be done anyway.

Or, alternatively, they may believe that if they win they can shut down this guy's competing software, and have no interest in pissing off some of these lawyered-up companies by asking them for royalties.

I think most cities with a large population have some form of a command center. I know where I live (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) the local government runs an "operations center" developed by IBM. See Smarter Cities and IBM Intelligent Operations Center. If I recall correctly, Dublin runs more or less the same solution.

I think most cities with a large population have some form of a command center. I know where I live (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) the local government runs an "operations center" developed by IBM. See Smarter Cities and IBM Intelligent Operations Center. If I recall correctly, Dublin runs more or less the same solution.

I know that someone has to build those robots,

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/may05/selfrep.ws.html

and someone else has to create the control software for those robots,

http://www.profactor.at/en/production/forschung-entwicklung/robotik-und-automation-bis-losgroesse-1/selbstprogrammierende-robotersysteme-fbirescope-flexpaint.html

and someone else has to provide the knowledge for those robots,

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/deepqa.shtml

and someone else has to maintain those robots,

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/may05/selfrep.ws.html

and if factory robots then someone else has to design the stuff those robots build,

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/e/sac/meem/public/old_issue/vol02iss04/MEEM020404.pdf

and someone else has to oversee and control those robots

Wishful thinking. There may be one temporary job here - but only until it's recognized that the system can do a better job of monitoring itself. http://inventorspot.com/robot_demonstrates_self_awareness

, ..., point is, there'll be always jobs, you just have to find and adapt.

True. There may still be extremely low paying jobs for tasks that are simply too unnecessary to justify spending the capital on a robotic system - such as feeding (or burying) the 6 billion uneducated/unemployed meatbags that on longer serve a purpose other than to consume resources.

You should try Lotus Notes for Linux . Its a hog, but does what you want!

Sometimes I need to scale vertically and not horizontally. There are times when you need a single chassis with 200+ cores and 8TB of ram and hundreds of PCIe slots for IO. You can take my pSeries from my cold dead hands.

Intel solutions are getting there with 80 cores and 2TB of RAM.

However, when it comes to moving IO, nothing beats big iron.

"The city links the 1,500 cameras that police have placed in trouble spots with thousands more... Even home owners can contribute camera feeds....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704538404574539910412824756.html

If you link your camera to the city "highly trained crime surveillance specialists will have access" ...
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/tech/svcs/link_your_cameras.html

IBM press release about it's Chicago's video analysis software that "detects suspicious activity and potential public safety concerns " ...
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22385.wss

If instead of trying to increase renewable capacity desperately - I'm doubtful about the execution of a very large ramp-up in renewable energy generation capacity in itself - the German government would try to decrease fossil fuel use, they'd save at least 25k lives per year as compared to shutting down nuclear plants and letting fossil fuel based ones operate.

Based on deaths per TWh(which includes Chernobyl for nuclear), it takes about 160 lives to generate one TWh by coal and 0.04 lives per TWh by nuclear fission. Germany in 2008 generated 291TWh of electricity from coal, that's about 47'000 lives lost in one year.

Keeping all the nuclear capacity and spending the ramp-up in renewables to shut down coal plants would save tens of thousands of lives. Shutting down nuclear plants forces Germany to open about 20 new fossil fuel based plants, because even with a substantial increase in renewable capacity they cannot meet demand.

This is nothing short of mass murder through ignorance.

I'm not renting a room from my mom. And I'm getting the feeling from the "love" letters from the I.R.S. that if i don't pay my taxes, that the Capitol will be boarded up. Hay IRS, where's the love? Am I the only person that's asking, "what are the Tax Breaks?" How about a reference to those tax codes that folks like EA get? Maybe something good could come out of this "openness" stuff. Wait, I think I just considered a task that WATSON could be used for...