August 23, 2014

C++14 Is Here: New Features
C++14, the new C++ standard succeeding C++11, has been finally approved and is heading to ISO for publication this year. While improvements in C++14 are "deliberately tiny" compared to C++11, says C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup, they still "add significant convenience for users" and are a step on the route to make C++ "more novice friendly." Within the C++ timeline, C++14 was planned as a minor release to complete the work that produced the C++11 standard, with the aim of becoming a cleaner, simpler, and faster language. New language features are left for the coming C++17 standard.


Five Levels of Big Data Maturity in an Organisation
Once the IT department is capable of working with Big Data technologies and the business understands what Big Data can do for the organisation, an organisation enters level 3 of the Big Data maturity index. Business adoption will result in more in-depth analysis of structured and unstructured data available within the company, resulting in more insights and better decision-making. Level 4 is the adoption of Big Data across the enterprise and results in integrated predictive insights into business operations and where Big Data analytics has become an integral part of the company’s culture. This level is the last level before a completely data-driven organisation that operates as a “data service provider”.


Improving Query Performance Using Partitioning in Apache Hive
Generally, Hive users know about the domain of the data that they deal with. ... In non-partitioned tables, Hive would have to read all the files in a table’s data directory and subsequently apply filters on it. This is slow and expensive—especially in cases of large tables. The concept of partitioning is not new for folks who are familiar with relational databases. Partitions are essentially horizontal slices of data which allow larger sets of data to be separated into more manageable chunks. In Hive, partitioning is supported for both managed and external tables in the table definition as seen below.


PCI DSS 3.0 Compliance Deadline Approaches. Will it Make Any Difference?
“There is more of a move to continuous compliance, but really that’s not something most organizations are ready for,” he said. “It will be interesting to see if anything changes.” If things do change, it may be at least in part because of increased awareness of the damage that a high-profile breach can cause. “Data security has become a board-level topic of discussion,” Borenstein said. “Executives recognize that the impact of a serious card loss breach can have a significant impact on customer perception, stock price, and more.”


The Value of Culture: Would you offer a new hire $1000 to quit?
Culture is not a singular element, but is made up of two mutually reinforcing elements—values and practices—which are easy to confuse. Mistaking practices for values is why success so often breeds failure. Xerox, for example, had a culture devoted to technical excellence and produced the world’s best performing copiers. It built up a great sales and service organization so that its customers could get the most out of their products. Yet that all came to naught when Canon and Ricoh started selling simpler, cheaper copiers that needed less maintenance.


Will Microsoft's Satya Nadella dump Windows Phone and the Xbox?
As for the the divisions that sell the Xbox, Surface, and Windows Phone devices, they practically contribute nothing. Computing and Gaming (C&G) Hardware, which makes the Xbox and the Surface, had a gross margin of 1% for the quarter. Phone Hardware had a gross margin of 3%. And even those dismal numbers overstate how little those divisions add to Microsoft's bottom line. Keizer says that C&G Hardware contributed only 0.1% of the company's gross margin, and Phone contributed only 0.3%. Under a strategy devised by former CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft was a devices and services company. Clearly, Microsoft couldn't get rid of hardware if half of its mission was to sell devices.


Renee Troughton on Agile Australia, Pragmatic Scaling and Non-violent Communication
Dealing with scaling up teams and scaling product at the same time is very rarely talked about, but interestingly Scrum of Scrums was originally around eight people and at our last count we now have twenty people at our Scrum of Scrums. ... we are getting the questions answered and the risks raised that we need to get handled, at the end of the day it’s still a very functional Scrum, everyone that is there needs to know the information that is coming out of it, so sometimes it is about knowing when you can effectively brake the rules at scale. It’s not an ideal situation to have twenty people around one board, but it works.


Multi-Tenancy Design Consideration
Though, many frameworks are available in the market to develop a multi - tenant application, but do they provide data, code portability, maintainability and platform agnostic support? The answer is doubtful. A multi-tenant application is a software where a shared code base installed on a single instance/pool serves 1…N client / tenants Architecting or designing a Multi-tenant application really needs a huge effort for handling all complexities from data security to UI display.


Half of UK IT unfamiliar with software-defined datacentres, shows study
“Through the use of software as opposed to hardware, an SDDC can offer businesses a fast, incredibly flexible way to not only virtualise their IT, but increase levels of flexibility, agility and control from the application layer down. It can remove barriers and enable business transformation," according to Linsell. Joe Baguley, VMware’s Europe CTO, previously predicted that software-defined everythingis changing the design, function and price points of datacentres. “Datacentres of tomorrow will not be populated with name-brand products,” he said.


US agencies to release cyberthreat info faster to healthcare industry
Information sharing has come a long way, she said, but still can be improved. Vetting information takes time, but DHS is looking at ways to speed up the process, she said. While Rosanova talking about healthcare providers sometimes needing security clearances to get threat information, those clearance aren't the "secret sauce," Castro said. Instead, participating in a collaborative environment, such as HITRUST's monthly threat briefing, will help drive forward more information sharing, she said. "The more collaboration you do like this, the better off you will be," he said.


5 ways to be a leader who gets it
To some, being a leader is just a job. But to others, it’s a choice, a calling even, to inspire others to engage, perform, and achieve. The women and men who make this choice are skilled in a number of areas that bring out the best in everyone and everything. They’re leaders who get it. Their secret sauce?  ... what social scientists call motivated blindness, a “systemic failure to notice unethical behavior in others when it’s not in our interest to do so.” Leaders who get it don’t sacrifice people and principles for profits



Quote for the day:

"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action." -- Peter Drucker

No comments:

Post a Comment