Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

August 19, 2014

About 4.5M face risk of ID theft after hospital network hacked
The hacker group has been involved theft of intellectual property such as medical device and product development data, CHS said. In this instance, though, the group apparently targeted non-medical patient identification data. Since the breach was discovered, CHS is working with Mandiant to clean out its systems and implement new remediation measures, the filing noted. CHS is also cooperating with federal agencies in the investigation. The CHS incident is the second major breach to be disclosed in the past week.

Start-Up Has New Approach for SDN Security
The company is taking advantage of new capabilities offered by the exploding SDN technologies in its effort to provide security for software-defined datacenters. "SDN is an opportunity to introduce advanced security controls and capabilities into the datacenter network in a way that can scale to the demands of a large data centers and offer a dynamic and pro-active security control framework, detecting and mitigating an attack at an early stage," the company said. "Using these principles, GuardiCore offers a security platform, targeting the detection and prevention of attack techniques used by hackers in the propagation and control phases of the attack’s 'kill-chain' inside datacenters."

World-Class EA: Business Reference Model
Business architecture is being used to design, plan, execute, and govern change initiatives throughout public and private sector entities. An architectural approach can systematically highlight the most effective state for a given environment, and then define how change can be effected within acceptable benefit, cost, and risk parameters. A key challenge to this approach is the consistent definition of the organization and where it needs to be, and in response this White Paper introduces a comprehensive reference model for business. The Business Reference Model (BRM) can be applied to both private and public sector organizations alike, and gives complex organizations a common way to view themselves in order to plan and execute effective transformational change.

BYOD Twists and Turns Keep CIOs Off-Balance
BYOD's ripple effect, however, pales in comparison to the benefits. There are huge corporate gains from employees using their mobile devices for work, Waran says. It's conventional wisdom that mobility improves worker productivity and collaboration, and BYOD's ability to scale the number of people in a mobile network will lead to exponentially higher benefits, a la Metcalfe's Law. There are individual worker productivity gains with BYOD, too. A BMC Software survey found that the average BYOD-carrying employee works an extra two hours and sends 20 more emails every day. One out of three BYOD employees checks work email before the official start of their work day, between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m.

HTC One Runs Windows
As far as Windows Phones go, the HTC One for Windows Phone is an appealing option. The metal design may steal sales away from Microsoft and its Lumia devices, thanks to its slick appearance and high-end materials. Its exclusivity to Verizon Wireless may hinder HTC a bit, but it left enough wiggle room in the press release language to imply other carriers might offer the device later this year. HTC is re-entering the Windows Phone market at in interesting time. Windows Phone's market share has dropped in the US to just 1.5%. Perhaps this premium handset, which stands in stark contrast to the polycarbonate designs from Microsoft/Nokia, is just the kick in the pants Windows Phone needs to regain some of its lost presence.

SanDisk's Ultra II SSD offers prices as low as 44 cents per gigabyte
The SanDisk Ultra II has a maximum sequential read/write speed of 550MBps and 500MBps, respectively. The SSD's random read/write performance tops out at 99,000 I/Os per second (IOPS) and 83,000 IOPS, respectively. By comparison, Samsung's TLC consumer SSD, the 840 EVO, retails for as little as $469 for a 1TB model. Samsung's 840 EVO SSD read/write performance tops out at 540MB/s and 520MB/s, respectively. As with other consumer-grade SSDs, SanDisk's new drive is designed and being marketed to deliver a cost-effective and upgrade for desktop and laptop users who want to increase performance, battery life and power efficiency.

Enhance Customer Retention and Acquisition Strategies with Insurance Data Analysis
By analyzing free form text data in adjuster notes, insurance companies can not only measure the time it takes to complete these activities but actually evaluate the quality of the interaction representatives have with customers. These are the moments of truth that can make or break the ever delicate relationship an insurer has with its customer. For example, if explaining the claims process is required when making first contact with the customer, the adjuster notes detailing the first contact activity can be analyzed to confirm if this requirement was met.

Feeling rushed? Break the habit of hurry and overwhelm
Take a deep breath. Seriously, when you feel your world about to spin out of control, close your office door or find someplace to be alone for a few minutes. Close your eyes and just breathe. Let your mind go blank — don’t think about your never-ending to-do list. Then open your eyes and focus on one single thing, whatever is next on your agenda. Consciously slow down as you walk back to your office or head for your next meeting. Your blood pressure will thank you, and so will your co-workers.

Interview with Thomas Imart, Creator of Tweetinvi
Twitter has become an integral part of most companies’ communication strategy. While direct messaging will always be in the forefront, the ability to analyze Twitter trends is often necessary. But Twitter doesn’t always make that easy. Over time many of the older APIs have been deprecated or removed entirely. Newer APIs have taken their place, but they often work very differently than one might expect. So we decided to talk to Thomas Imart, creator of Tweetinvi about his offering.

Exclusive: White House meets with big biz on immigration
Obama has pledged to act by the end of the summer, but the timing is a growing concern to Senate Democrats, who fear that a sweeping program to temporarily halt deportation will further endanger their chances of maintaining control of the chamber. They are most worried about the impact on key Senate races in red states, including Arkansas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Alaska. Obama has not yet received recommendations from his staff, and no decision has been made on how he should proceed, according to sources familiar with the process.

Quote for the day:

"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship." -- John D. Rockefeller

August 18, 2014

MPTCP offers performance and resiliency but security is nonexistent
"With MultiPath TCP, a perfectly normal client could say, 'I want to open 10 different TCP connections that are all part of one logical TCP connection.' It would simply fragment the traffic across all of those in such a way that there isn't enough information on any of those TCP channels for an intrusion detection system to recognize what the application layer is, or more precisely that it is malicious," he said. "If the intrusion detection is not aware that MPTCP exists and doesn't know how to collect all those TCP streams and reassemble what's going on, then it's blind to the application layer traffic."

Heartbleed software flaw exposes weaknesses in hardware design
Data is vulnerable to hackers when in transit or in computer memory, said Ruby Lee, professor of engineering at Princeton University's Department of Electrical Engineering, at a presentation to the Hot Chips conference. The weakness is in the memory and cache, or secondary memory where data temporarily resides before being sent for processing or storage. "This is correctly functioning hardware -- with no bugs -- but it is leaking out information," said Lee, who was chief architect and one of the lead processor developers at Hewlett-Packard before joining Princeton.

Collaborative Software Development Platforms for Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourced software development, by its very nature, is collabor-ative. The stakeholders in a crowdsourced software project form a virtual team with the support of collaboration tools and social media technologies. Various kinds of communication, collaboration, and coordination (3C) happen among the requesters, providers, and platform vendors for example, requesters and providers communicate about a task’s requirements and evaluation criteria, requesters coordinate the progress and technical decisions of different tasks, and providers collaborate with each other via shared artifacts and workspace.

For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights
“Data wrangling is a huge — and surprisingly so — part of the job,” said Monica Rogati, vice president for data science at Jawbone, whose sensor-filled wristband and software track activity, sleep and food consumption, and suggest dietary and health tips based on the numbers. “It’s something that is not appreciated by data civilians. At times, it feels like everything we do.” Several start-ups are trying to break through these big data bottlenecks by developing software to automate the gathering, cleaning and organizing of disparate data, which is plentiful but messy.

The Data Analysts Toolkit: Why are Excel and R useful together, and how do we connect them?
One area of interest is Predictive Modelling. This is the process of using a statistical or model to predict the value of a target variable. What does this actually mean? Predictive modelling is where we work to the predict values in new data, rather than trying to explain an existing data set. To do this, we work with variables. By their nature, these vary; if they didn’t, they would be called a constant. One pioneer was Francis Galton, who was a bit of an Indiana Jones in his day. Although he wrote in the 19th century, his work is considered good and clear enough to read today. Therefore, this research has a long lineage, although it seems to be a new thing. We will start with the simplest: linear regression.

Consumer-facing industries lead in digital strategies: Forrester
"This is mainly because many want to ignore the changes that are taking place, but then there are others who say they know what it is, but they really don't know what it is. We refer to that as a 'bolt on' digital strategy where some executives will believe they are pushing a digital strategy but it's just really lip service, and they're not driving it through the business," he said. The report recommends in order to move from being a 'digital dinosaur', where a digital strategy is virtually non-existent, to a 'digital master', CIOs need to help shape a digital business vision in collaboration with other businesses leaders within the company.

Technology Can Make Lawful Surveillance Both Open and Effective
In brief, any surveillance process that collects or handles bulk data or metadata about users not specifically targeted by a warrant must be subject to public review and should use strong encryption to safeguard the privacy of innocent users. Only after law-enforcement agencies identify people whose actions justify closer investigation and demonstrate probable cause via an authorized electronic warrant can they gain access to unencrypted surveillance data or employ secret analysis processes. The details of an investigation need not be public, but the data collection process would be—what information was collected, from whom, and how it was encrypted, stored, searched, and decrypted.

Managing Mobile Risk in the Cloud
Iterative and agile software development methodologies and tools are the buzzwords of the moment because they capture how software developers are ideally working in this environment. Perfection will not be achieved before code is released, but at the same time certain minimum standards of data security and privacy, as well as release objectives, need to be met. This can be done, but certain preconceptions about the cloud need to be overcome in order to do so. The most important misconception about the cloud is that it necessarily exposes apps and data to the outside world. However, this is not so.

Grocery stores in multiple states hit by data breach
According to Supervalu, its internal IT team detected the intrusion and quickly moved to remediate it. "An investigation supported by third-party data forensics experts is on-going to understand the nature and scope of the incident," the company said. "Supervalu believes the intrusion has been contained and is confident that its customers can safely use their credit and debit cards in its stores. " The company is offering consumers affected by the breach a year's worth of free identity protection services. In a separate statement, AB Acquisition, which owns and operates Albertson's, ACME, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's and Star Markets said it is working closely with Supervalu to find out what exactly happened and what data might have been stolen.

“Professionalize” Information Security?
The only question is whether companies wish to invest in ensuring that they are hiring the professionals they need for information security. The technology world is rife with examples of private consortia establishing standards and other metrics for all sorts of critical networking and other tasks, often without the prodding or confiscated money of politicians. Licensure is simply an easy way to shove the costs of background work on taxpayers—effectively, socialization of security. To be sure, proponents of “professionalization” will state that the entire public has something to gain and on and on, offering the usual hackneyed justifications for yet another program to be administered by a government that can’t afford half of what it’s already doing.

Quote for the day:

"We're living in a time when disruptive use of technology can take a business from nothing to number one." -- Robert Stroud

August 17, 2014

Database Development: Comparing Python and Java ORM Performance
I have a good deal of experience with Java, which helped me in getting the Java ORM working, but a beginner might not be able to get past the setup difficulties. However, having used and written about both languages, I should note that despite these occasional difficulties my preference would generally be to use Java. Why? Well, Java is a proven technology; out of the box, Java is structured, secure, strongly typed, and thread-safe. Anyway, that's enough grumbling. Let's see how to set up some ORM code in these two languages.

Parallel-lazy Performance: Java 8 vs Scala vs GS Collections
Sponsored by Goldman Sachs. Java 8 has Streams, Scala has parallel collections, and GS Collections has ParallelIterables. Since we use parallelism to achieve better performance, it's interesting to ask: how well do they perform? We'll look at how these three APIs work with a critical eye toward performance. We'll also look at common performance pitfalls. Listen to Craig Motlin, the technical lead for GS Collections, a full-featured open-source Collections library for Java and the author of the framework's parallel, lazy API

MaxClients in Apache and its effect on Tomcat during Full GC
Let's see how the MaxClients option in Apache affects the system when Full GC has occurred in Tomcat. Most developers know that "stop the world (STW) phenomenon" occurs when GC has occurred in Java (for more refer to Understanding Java Garbage Collection). In particular, Java developers at NHN may have experienced faults caused by GC-related issues in Tomcat. Because Java Virtual Machine (JVM) manages the memory, Java-based systems cannot be free of the STW phenomenon caused by GC. Several times a day, GC occurs in services you have developed and currently operate. In this situation, even if TTS caused by faults does not occur, services may return unexpected 503 errors to users.

Performance Comparison of Virtual Machines and Linux Containers
The results show that Docker equals or exceeds KVM performance in every case tested. For CPU and memory performance KVM and Docker introduce a measurable but negligible overhead, although for I/O intensive applications both require tuning. Docker performance degrades when using files stored in AUFS, compared to using volumes, that have better performance. A volume is a specially-designated directory within one or more containers that bypasses the union file system, so it does not have the overhead that the storage backends may have. The default AUFS backend causes significant I/O overhead specially when using many layers and deep nested directory hierarchies.

Getting Serious About IPv6 – Go Big or Go Home
Think carefully before you just start shutting off IPv6. Remember, it is enabled and preferred and if your existing production network is using IPv6 for some of its network traffic you will have a production outage while you disable IPv6. Furthermore, you might not even know all the applications that ARE using IPv6, have fun troubleshooting that one. Even after you think you have turned off IPv6 on your equipment, how often do you actually audit and check to see if it is running? Does it get re-enabled with OS patches and updates? What about third party equipment that runs on your network or wireless/wired guest network?

Pattern Recognition Algorithm Recognizes When Drivers Are on the Phone
A dashboard camera in front of the driver is well-positioned to spot cell phone use. Their system processes the images from this camera in three steps. First, it locates the driver and crops the image to show just the face and area to each side of the face. The idea is to see the driver’s hands should they be raised next to the ear in holding a mobile phone while making a call. Next, it identifies any skin pixels in the image and assesses the position of these pixels. It then segments the image into areas showing face and hands. Finally, it assesses the likelihood that the driver is on a call and issues a warning accordingly.

Oracle slaps Oregon with a lawsuit over troubled Obamacare website
A key bone of contention in the dispute centers around the fact that Oregon hired Oracle on a time-and-materials basis, with the state serving as its own systems integrator. “That decision was akin to an individual with no construction experience undertaking to manage the processes of designing and building a massive multi-use downtown skyscraper without an architect or general contractor,” Oracle said. Another alleged flaw in the state’s approach: It decided to build Cover Oregon at the same time it was embarking on a major IT modernization project for other aspects of its health and human services operations.

SQL Server Change Tracking: A Near Bullet-Proof ETL Solution
This segment will introduce the concept of CT as well as provide a substantive demo (i.e., something better than a hello world example) of CT’s functionality. CT was introduced with SQL Server 2008R2 and unlike Change Data Capture (CDC) is available for all versions of SQL Server 2008 (and later) including SQL Server Express. CT captures changes to database table rows over a period of time. It does not record each change during that period, but retains the net changes by tracking the individual rows (using the Primary Key) that have changed. Thus, it is great for data extraction/synchronization, but not for auditing (that is CDC’s area of expertise).

An Introduction to Functional Programming with Java 8
Given functional programming has been around since the 50s, and until recently mostly disregarded by the mainstream, why has it become such a hot topic? My opinion is that it’s because of its ability to easily process work in parallel taking advantage of multi-core processors, lazy (on-demand) evaluation, and ease of integration with other languages such as Java. Certainly the JVM has provided a good base for Scala which can even be embedded in a Java program, giving the best of both worlds plus an easier migration path for developers.

Three Secrets of Organizational Effectiveness
These are, of course, widely appreciated management methods for raising performance. But they’re rarely put into practice. Perhaps it’s because they feel counterintuitive to many managers. Even the leaders who use them, and whose enterprises benefit from the results, don’t know why they work. So the value of these powerful practices is often overlooked. That’s where neuroscience comes in. Breakthroughs in human brain research (using conventional experimental psychology research in addition to relatively new technologies like CT scans and magnetic resonance imaging) are revealing new insights about cognitive processes.

Quote for the day:

"The first and best victory is to conquer self." -- Plato

August 16, 2014

Converging API Governance and SOA Governance
API governance is heavily influenced by IT business goals and objectives. Leading API governance platforms provide analytics supporting the assessment of IT business value. The platform should capture service tier subscription information, collects usage statistics, present productivity metrics, and integrate with billing and payment systems. API governance encompasses API subscriptions and API promotion meta-data. Governance activities managing API promotion meta-data include rationalizing keyword tags used to categorize APIs, and developer documentation content management.

A Look at Cyber Security Trends for 2014
This year, there’s been more discussion than ever about numerous topics such as the benefits of big data, the Internet of Things, mobile technology, and how to make the most of cloud computing. There’s plenty of excitement to be had so far and much more on the way, but in the fast moving technological environment we now live in, there’s also reason to worry. Security in particular, whether it’s network security, computer security, or IT security, is foremost on many business leaders’ minds. To prepare for what the future may hold, it’s important to look back at some of the recent trends to see the threats and solutions having the biggest impact on cyber security.

IoT is here and there, but not everywhere yet
isco Systems has estimated IoT will generate $14.4 trillion in economic value between last year and 2022. But Kevin Shatzkamer, a distinguished systems architect at Cisco, called IoT a misnomer, for now. “I think we’re pretty far from envisioning this as an Internet,” Shatzkamer said. “Today, what we have is lots of sets of intranets.” Within enterprises, it’s mostly individual business units deploying IoT, in a pattern that echoes the adoption of cloud computing, he said. In the past, most of the networked machines in factories, energy grids and other settings have been linked using custom-built, often local networks based on proprietary technologies.

Think like a cop: two simple questions that will protect you from cyber wolves
The secret to avoiding danger is not to rely on lists of things experts tell you to do, but to get into the habit of knowing what to ask to avoid trouble. There are two questions that the C-suite and customers should ask to minimise their risk of exposure to cyber crime but these are not being asked. Why is that? ... The diligent police detective knows their powers of arrest and restraint before they start grappling around on the floor with a villain. They know and remember this because there is a strong likelihood they will face this danger and they must do the right thing when it happens. Once ingrained in the thin blue mind, the cue card can be written.

10 Essential Elements of a Mobile Strategy
In the past few years, our thought processes have shifted in three fundamental ways. We expect to: Satisfy any impulse on a mobile device within a minute. 52% of highly mobile people are frustrated when something they want isn’t available on their smartphone; Access relevant information in any circumstance via an app or mobile search. 45 percent of users between 18 and 29 use mobile search daily; Perform a wide variety of personal and professional tasks on our mobile devices, including accessing critical documents, sharing photos, submitting expenses, performing banking tasks, managing investment portfolios etc.

NASA Mission: Cloud Governance
After the IT group realized that there were multiple root accounts, it had to design and implement a governance model for managing the accounts and apply that model to the existing network infrastructure and cloud deployment, says JPL cyber security engineer Matt Derenski. The highly automated AWS cloud system helped JPL's IT staff sort out and manage the accounts issue and then other governance and compliance requirements. Chiang notes that JPL IT staffers sometimes have difficulty tracking usage and application data on the laboratory's internal network, but the Amazon cloud offers complete visibility into the number of active accounts and which servers they're running on.

5 Must-Have Characteristics to Enable Enterprise Architecture Successfully
A lot of organizations have tried to implement Enterprise Architecture in IT, but have had a hard time gaining credibility within the organization and communicating its value effectively. Many are now turning to consultants with strong EA backgrounds to come in and help make EA successful. There are 5 characteristics that we should ascribe to in order to enable a strong Enterprise Architecture foundation for an organization: Transparency; Integrity; Selflessness; Empathy; and Effective Communication.

Information Governance: Why it’s a priority, not an option
Despite purchasing highly sophisticated data management solutions from the best of vendors, organizations’ data suffers from inconsistencies with effects as minor, but embarrassing, as wrong address or contact person name being printed on customer invoice, to as major as wrong decisions being taken by top management because of incorrect/insufficient data being available to them. In extreme cases, the organizations may fail to support regulatory compliance, or might have to re-issue their financial statements in the face of reports containing inaccurate or incomplete information being presented to relevant stakeholders.

Big Data and the Information Governance Imperative
With a smaller information footprint, organizations can more easily find what they need and derive business value from it. They must eliminate the data debris regularly and consistently, and to do this, processes and systems must be in place to cull out valuable information and discard the data debris. An IG program sets the framework to accomplish this. But a key challenge is that because of the inter-disciplinary requirements for implementing IG—no one wants to own IG. It touches on parts of the strnegths of a CIO or General Counsel, but it also requires them to go out of their confort zone into new areas.

The IT skills conundrum: too many threats and not enough professionals
With fewer skilled professionals, some organisations will simply continue to struggle to do anything beyond keeping the lights on. The smarter businesses will take action to understand their risk exposure across the business and prioritise areas to focus on. This enables them to make more informed decisions around resource requirements to help mitigate risk. But a lack of resource will often mean that there is nobody available internally to carry out the assessment in the first place. Risk and security management are important areas for any organisation and, as the threat landscape evolves, every enterprise needs to consider its current risk exposure in the context of its commercial objectives.

Quote for the day:

"Have confidence that if you have done a little thing well, you can do a bigger thing well, too." -- Joseph Storey

August 15, 2014

The two main benefits I’ve seen from switching to Scrum
If you’re not using Scrum, there may be a reason below to consider it. If you’re using Scrum, you may find something we’re doing differently which could work for you. If you’ve no interest at all in Scrum, I’d say the things below are of use to any software development team, perhaps you can find a way to adopt them in your process. Also, these benefits certainly don’t require Scrum but they came as a result of adopting some of the processes commonly adopted alongside Scrum so I relate the former to the latter in my thinking.

Peak vs. Tibbr: Two Apps That Help Track Team Communications
The two services have somewhat different takes on how they work: Tibbr can be used to both monitor and post to various linked networks; Peak is read-only. Both have a variety of analytics to give you a better picture of how you use your various networks. The two also differ as to which networks they connect to, with Tibbr offering more options. ... The difference is that both Peak and Tibbr go beyond the standard social media networks and connect to business-related networks such as GitHub and Google Drive. They also are designed for teams to use, rather than just individuals who want to retweet the same message on a particular schedule.

Analytics Across the Enterprise: An interview with the authors
Deliver results interactively: don’t define a multi-year project without any checkpoints, prototypes or deliverables for several years. You’ll get a faster time-to-value if you do an early prototype and show it to stakeholders. This is key for actions and decisions that generate value. Don’t give up on driving an analytics culture—you’ve got the facts behind you and, quite simply, analytics works. Several studies have highlighted the value of analytics, and companies that use predictive analytics are outperforming those that do not by a factor of five.

IBM Builds A Scalable Computer Chip Inspired By The Human Brain
“This new chip will provide a powerful tool to researchers who are studying algorithms that use spiking neurons,” Dr. Terrence J. Sejnowski told me. Sejnowski heads Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute. He’s unaffiliated with IBM’s project but is familiar with the technology. “We know that such algorithms exist because the brain uses spiking neurons and can outperform all existing approaches, with a power budget of 20 watts, less than your laptop.” It’s important to note, though, that the SyNAPSE system won’t replace the computers of today – rather, they’re intended to supplement them.

How to recognise the cyber insider threat
"Once an adversary has code execution on your computer, they are essentially an insider. The controls you need to build need to take into account what an insider could do to your network." He added that the insider threat needs to be communicated to the company's board so that they can have input into decisions that are made to deal with the problem, in conjunction with the IT department. "Cyber security is a team sport and that team can consist of people in your organisation and service providers," said Smith. ... "The Australian banking industry is starting to conduct extreme cyber scenario planning as part of their regulatory requirements. In doing so, banks are considering the worst case scenarios that could occur."

Complementing Agile SDLC with Agile Architecture
Agile methodologies extend product lifecycles through faster TTM and continuous delivery maintenance in order to ensure its high quality of service (QoS) defined by functional feasibility, business, and technology capabilities. Agile SDLC produces the minimally viable product (MVP), which is continuously enhanced with “value-added product features.” While most architects may not have the ability to envision what the product software may look like in the not-so-distant future, they must still provision for seamless future enhancements throughout the entire product lifecycle. This type of application architecture fits the definition of Agile.

Annual Report: State of the Information Governance Industry
IG's biggest problem is that, due to its complexity and crossing of functional lines, it takes a long time to shape up an IG project: 58% of Practitioners stated it takes a year or more to startup an IG project - from conceptualization to beginning. (And that's not even getting results and completing it!) Also, related to that issue, 68% of Practitioners stated it was "Important or Very Important" to quantify the financial benefits of IG, but also, more than three-quarters of the survey Practitioners include 'soft' costs and benefits in their model, such as risk avoidance and improved employee productivity.

Writing Right Policies and Procedures for Cloud Governance
From his role perspective, Pandey says, “A CISO may have independent accountability or has to work in tandem with other department(s) because more than necessary information is exposed to internal users and confidential data is accessible to external users or simply outsiders.” “A CISO should ensure that organisational digital assets are personally used, compliance to regulatory standards/requirements is mandated and organisational data in cloud must not be visible to third part entities,” says Pandey.

Hacktivism: good or evil?
Whether hacking is worse than a physical assault, such as sending large numbers of useless facsimiles or holding a mass protest outside the buildings of the Church of Scientology, depends on your point of view. Is it worse? At first sight it might seem so, since those protesting electronically invariably do so anonymously. However, some of those protesting physically do so wearing hoods or masks. Of course, like many protests, innocent bystanders can be hurt.

Microsoft postpones IE's Java blocking after IT complains
Microsoft characterized the blocking as a security improvement -- though, in truth, rival browsers have had similar or even more aggressive tools for years -- and said it would add other ActiveX controls to the banned list over time. When the tool is turned on, IE will show a warning if it tries to call an obsolete Java ActiveX control: for Java 8, those include any version except for mid-July's Java SE 8 Update 11. ... IT administrators can manage the notifications on workers' PCs using Group Policy settings, including one that turns off the warning altogether and another that prevents employee overrides.

Quote for the day:

"Speed is useful only if you are running in the right direction." -- Joel Barker

August 14, 2014

Systems Disparity: The Implications of Data Proliferations on Business Decisions
A typical too-big-too-fail organization will have between 1,500 and 2,000 applications. These applications have proliferated for various reasons, ... they can run on a variety of hardware platforms and technologies (each with its own unique operating system). The applications in question are designed according to a variety of paradigms and methodologies and are developed using a vast range of tools. These tools, which are generally aligned to a technology platform, encompass, among other things, programming languages, database-management systems, and user-interface builders. And it is in the context of this variety and the resulting heterogeneous environment that the term disparate is coined.

How to Expedite Continuous Testing
The prescription for continuous testing is deceptively simple: Automated unit tests, version control and a continuous integration server. We wanted to first get past the buzzwords and talk about how to actually do it, by getting started with Ruby and GitHub. Today, we'll install Jenkins and CircleCI, hook them to our GitHub repository and get continuous automated build/inspect going, step by step. Along the way we'll talk about some common setup problems; you may want to read the whole article first, then try to follow the step-by-step instructions.

Partnership Enables Smaller Companies to Leverage Advanced BI Solutions
“Robust BI and analytics solutions are tools that organizations of all types and sizes must actively use to achieve success in today’s business environment,” said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. “All companies, regardless of size, should have access to the BI tools they need to understand and make positive use of the information generated by their organizations. Information Builders is thrilled to be partnering with Arrow to extend the power of BI to a greater pool of potential users and ensure that more companies have the tools needed to make informed decisions, improve business processes, and boost revenue.”

Create real-time graphs with these five free web-based apps
Creating graphs is easy -- grab your favorite spreadsheet program, enter some data, and use the chart wizard. What's more difficult is creating those graphs to be published on the web based on dynamic data. Plenty of options are available to graph hard-entered data, but few are capable of dynamic generation. In this edition of Five Apps, we take a look at five free web-based tools for creating different types of graphs from dynamic data. Each of these apps offers a vast number of options and lots of customizability, more so than I could possibly demonstrate here. So take a look at each webpage and browse through the examples provided to see the power of each of these tools.

Cyberspace 2025: Overview
Our research forecasts that by 2025, two billion new Internet users will come online, for a total of 4.7 billion people online. Nearly 75 percent of these Internet users will hail from emerging economies. During the same period, social and demographic trends, such as the growing need for a highly-skilled workforce and increases in aging populations, will create new layers of challenge for policymakers already grappling with societal dependence on the Internet.

BYOD and the challenges of managing VDI and VDA
Apart from the difficulties resulting from integrating these new devices into a corporate IT infrastructure, there are a number of specific software asset management (SAM) related issues to consider which have important licensing implications. For example: Who owns the software on the device that is brought in? What applications are they using? Are there apps in use that are free for personal use but need to be paid-for when used in a corporate environment? How will the software on these devices be consumed?

Managers Can Motivate Employees with One Word
David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, has identified relatedness — feelings of trust, connection, and belonging—as one of the five primary categories of social pleasures and pains (along with status, certainty, autonomy, and fairness). Rock’s research shows that the performance and engagement of employees who experience relatedness threats or failures will almost certainly suffer. And in other research, the feeling of working together has indeed been shown to predict greater motivation, particularly intrinsic motivation, that magical elixir of interest, enjoyment, and engagement that brings with it the very best performance.

Reconceptualizing the Board and its Metrics
The focus on features has lead to a faulty evaluation metric for corporate governance. Indeed, counting features is the most common scale used when comparing boards. When The Globe and Mail, for example, publishes its rankings of Canadian boards, it scores companies by looking at the number of features of governance. If Company A can check off more boxes than Company B, then the conclusion is made that Company A has a better board than Company B. The verification of a board’s features, however, does very little when it comes to understanding and evaluating actual board behavior.

The automated threat mitigation tool helping to beat Big Data security blues
Hexadite aims to bring that automation to corporate IT environments — and Barak believes the system is robust enough to allow administrators to rely on that automation to protect their environments. Hexadite comes with a pre-defined library of alerts and behaviours that look at all actionable information from the network and endpoints to gain a holistic view of what’s really happening. The system's analysis is built on algorithms that took years to develop, Barak said, that takes into consideration the minutiae of detail in a system, evaluating files, network connections, internet traffic, processes, and anything else going on — looking for the anomalies that can mean that a system has been compromised.

Balancing Quality and Velocity in Agile
Agile software development teams have to assure that the products that they develop have sufficient quality. Management often also expect that they increase their velocity to be able to deliver more functionality faster to their customer. Several authors explored the relationship between quality and velocity and suggested ways to improve both quality and velocity. Bob Galen wrote about the importance of software quality in respect to becoming faster in the blog post read my lips – agile isn’t fast:

Quote for the day:

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” -- Winston Churchill

August 13, 2014

Similarities and Differences Between Predictive Analytics and Business Intelligence
The similarities of BI and PA are points I’ve tried to make in talks I’ve given at eMetrics and performance management conferences. After making suitable translations of terms, these two fields can understand each other well. Two sample differences in terminology are described here. First, one rarely hears the term KPI at a PA conference, but will often hear it at BI conferences. If we use google as an indicator of popularity of the term KPI, “predictive analytics” KPI' yielded a mere 103,000 hits on google, whereas “business intelligence” KPI' yielded 1,510,000 hits. In PA, one is more likely to hear these ideas described as metrics or even features or derived variables that can be used as inputs to models are as a target variable.

2014's Hottest IT Certification
With more than half of 2014 behind us, it's that time of the year where we look at IT certifications standings in real world IT. The right certifications can help earn tech workers premium pay or land the job they've been aspiring to. That's why knowing what is "hot" with employers is important when considering your professional development. Every quarter Foote Partners compiles their data in the IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends Report, and they speak with over 2600 employers to bridge the disconnect between job titles, job content and compensation. Read on to find out where the heat is in regards to IT certifications, salaries and employer needs.

How To Refactor For Dependency Injection, Part 4: Configuration Changes
In the early days of DI containers, XML configuration was the generally recognized method of configuring a container. As time went on and fluent interfaces became popular, the focus shifted away from XML configuration and more toward using code as configuration. By using code as configuration you gain all the benefits of the compiler checking your types for you, making configuration much easier. Now, in modern DI, XML configuration is seldom used, and instead techniques that involve code configuration are used.

Microservices and the First Law of Distributed Objects
So in essence, there is no contradiction between my views on distributed objects and advocates of microservices. Despite this essential non-conflict, there is another question that is now begging to be asked. Microservices imply small distributed units that communicate over remote connections much more than a monolith would do. Doesn't that contravene the spirit of the first law even if it satisfies the letter of it?While I do accept that there are valid reasons to do for a distributed design for many systems, I do think distribution is a complexity booster. A coarser-grained API is more awkward than a fine-grained one.

Internet Touches Half Million Routes: Outages Possible Next Week
This situation is more of an annoyance than a real Internet-wide threat. Most routers in use today at midsize to large service providers, and certainly all of the routers that operate the core infrastructure of the Internet, have plenty of room to deal with the Internet’s current span, because they were provisioned that way by sensible network operators. Affected boxes cause local connectivity problems for the network service providers who still run them, so they will be identified quickly and upgraded as we pass the threshold. Their instability in turn causes some minor additional load on adjacent routers.

Delivering a Customer-Focused Government Through Smarter IT
The Digital Service will work to find solutions to management challenges that can prevent progress in IT delivery. To do this, we will build a team of more than just a group of tech experts – Digital Service hires will have talent and expertise in a variety of disciplines, including procurement, human resources, and finance. The Digital Service team will take private and public-sector best practices and help scale them across agencies – always with a focus on the customer experience in mind. We will pilot the Digital Service with existing funds in 2014, and would scale in 2015 as outlined in the President's FY 2015 Budget.

PaaS shoot-out: Cloud Foundry vs. OpenShift
For deployment of application source code, OpenShift uses Git, but it also allows you to deploy binary packages. Cloud Foundry only takes your binaries (.WAR files for now, with other formats to be supported later), then automatically combines them with buildpacks of languages and frameworks (such as Java and Tomcat) and services such as databases. The buildpack format was developed by Heroku and contributed to the open source community, spawning many community buildpacks, most of which work on Cloud Foundry.

Dell bundles backup software, eyes further development
“We have a new approach to data protection that is driving down the costs,” said Michael Grant, head of software product marketing at Dell. The release is a precursor to Dell delving more deeply into the market of storage software, not just as a vendor but as a developer of new technologies. “We’re making a pretty big investment in data protection,” Grant said. The new Backup and Disaster Recovery Suite contains popular Dell backup programs, AppAssure, NetVault Backup and vRanger. Dell acquired each of these programs through company acquisitions in 2012. Each application performs a slightly different function, Grant explained.

400 Gbit Ethernet: The Next Leap
According to the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Bandwidth Assessment Ad hoc, industry bandwidth requirements are continuing to grow at an exponential pace. At such a rapid speed, networks will need to support terabit-per-second capacities by 2015 and 10 Tbit/s capacities by 2020. ... In May 2013, recognizing this growth and foreseeing the need for a new Ethernet speed rate, the IEEE 802.3 working group formed the IEEE 802.3 400 Gbit/s Ethernet (400 GbE) Study Group. When the working group last addressed the need for a new Ethernet speed rate, two rates were created: 40 GbE, which was intended to provide a medium path for servers, and 100 GbE, which was targeted at network aggregation applications.

Large Scale Event Tracking with RabbitMQ
On the one hand, they provide game designers and game balancers with a valuable tool for their work. The event data helps them answer questions such as whether players regularly quit the game at a specific quest, or how a new feature that has been implemented is performing. The insights gained are used to improve the gameplay and user experience. On the other hand they are a powerful tool for marketing specialists. Specific events make it possible to identify which marketing channel a new player is gained through, and thus allow a constructive adaptation of marketing strategies and channels. Finally, they can be used by the developer, for example to measure and improve performance of loading times or to identify and adapt to the mobile devices used.

Quote for the day:

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" -- Philip K. Dick

August 12, 2014

Redefining System Architecture with Data at the Core
System architecture in today’s cloud era should be defined by the data it contains rather than the hardware that stores and makes it available. Software-defined data platforms are drastically and rapidly changing the IT model. By abstracting the underlying hardware, and allowing data management and access to be defined workload by workload, data characteristics are now defining the infrastructure used, rather than vice versa. IT investment, therefore, needs to be better matched against the value of data to the business, while allowing increased flexibility and responsiveness.

Sentencing, by the Numbers
While well intentioned, this approach is misguided. The United States inarguably has a mass-incarceration crisis, but it is poor people and minorities who bear its brunt. Punishment profiling will exacerbate these disparities — including racial disparities — because the risk assessments include many race-correlated variables. Profiling sends the toxic message that the state considers certain groups of people dangerous based on their identity. It also confirms the widespread impression that the criminal justice system is rigged against the poor. It is naïve to assume judges will use the scores only to reduce sentences. Judges, especially elected ones, will face pressure to harshly sentence those labeled “high risk.”

Forget 'Things' – It's The Internet Of Business Models
Success in the Internet of Things will come to those who look beyond the disruptive technology. Indeed, as former Intel CEO Andy Groves perfectly put it: "Disruptive technologies is a misnomer. What it is, is trivial technology that screws up your business model." That's a great observation, especially with the Internet of Things where falling prices are making the technology more readily available -- so if you're looking to make money out of manufacturing home sensors, maybe think again because you'll be up against stiff competition, even from someone with some electronic smarts and $35 to spend on a Raspberry Pi.

'Biochip' aims to quicken disease diagnosis, cut medical test costs
The Hydra-1K -- which is a silicon chip -- can be used at doctor's offices or points of care, where a disease can be instantly analyzed to determine treatment, said Arjang Hassibi, founder and CEO of startup InSilixa, during a presentation at the Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, California. The chip -- which Hassibi also called a reader -- heats up a culture or sample, and can identify unique molecular structures like DNA sequences, to help identify possible strains of a disease, which can help determine medication, or whether a patient needs to be isolated. Right now the chip can test cultures or samples only for specific diseases and mutations.

A Glimpse Behind the Cloud: Tour the EMC Durham Data Center
Our virtual tour of the Durham Data Center gives you a high level understanding of how our data center works and a glimpse of EMC Cloud computing using Vblock architecture. It features purpose-built Vblocks which run our SAP-based, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and Exchange environment, as well as 100 percent tapeless backup environments built on our Data Domain and Avamar technologies. With tens of thousands of VMs in our data center, our sales staff can tap in to Durham to demonstrate products and services in a real-life lab setting.

Agile Practices and Social Nudges in the Workplace
A special kind of nudge is the “Social Nudge”, which results from the interaction with other people. According to Thaler and Sunstein: “Social influences come in two basic categories. The first involves information. If many people do something or think something, their actions and their thoughts convey information about what might be best for you to do or think. The second involves peer pressure. If you care about what other people think about you, then you might go along with the crowd to avoid their wrath or curry their favor.”

Intel watches ARM as low-powered computing thrives
“You get more peak performance per thread on Intel than on ARM-based chips," said Novakovic. “ARM-based architecture is more suited for mobile devices and connected devices such as the refrigerators and the washing machines." But Intel thought that if it built extremely high-end high-compute power processors first, it can scale it down to suit the mobile devices needs. “But ARM proved that strategy completely wrong by starting ground up,” said Novakovic. “There is a growing market for low-power CPU architecture and that’s where ARM is winning and that will be Intel’s biggest threat,” said technology blogger Scott Wasson.

Ontologies versus Data Models
The common definition of an ontology is: a specification of a conceptualization. I find this is a very difficult definition to apply practically. To me an ontology is a view of the concepts, relations and rules for a particular area of business information, irrespective of how that information may be stored as data. ... Using ontologies to drive clarity in business discussions is beneficial. We can clearly see that Figures 1 and 2 are not data models, and so data models cannot be used in this example. However, ontologies also play a vital role in conjunction with data models. As noted above, data models are sometimes held to represent business reality, as well as provide a design for a data store. Yet, a data model of any kind has to be a generalization across many different business views.

Virtual Meetings on the Rise, but Value Is Still Debatable
Meetings are increasing because, in general, workplaces are encouraging collaboration–between individual, teams, divisions and locations, Craig Daniel, vice president of collaboration products at LogMeIn, told eWEEK, noting there has been a dramatic increase of tablets and smartphones replacing PCs as the virtual meeting tool of choice. ... "Nobody will admit to liking meetings, but most people will acknowledge that they serve a purpose," Daniel said. "Many meetings are a waste of time, but every now and then, with the right attendees and the right tools, we come away from one saying, ‘That was a good meeting’."

Project Inception - How to Use a Single Meeting to Achieve Alignment
Inception attendees should include the core team doing the work and the sponsoring stakeholders or their designates. Typically this will include business, product, development and perhaps other teams like operations and support. It may also include representatives from upstream or downstream teams that are producers or consumers of this teams work. Practically the effectiveness of the meeting starts to diminish when the number of people is over 10 people because there is a lot of group participation and having 20 people all contribute effectively is difficult.

Quote for the day:

"There is no right way to do a wrong thing." -- Harold S. Kushner

August 11, 2014

When Robots Take All the Work, What’ll Be Left for Us to Do?
Humans will continue to be useful workers, the argument goes, because of things like empathy, creativity, judgment, and critical thinking. Consider the all-too-common experience of calling customer service reps whose employers force them to follow a script—a kind of pseudo-automation. When made to follow a decision tree the way a computer would, all four of those qualities are sucked out of the interaction—no opportunity to exercise creativity, empathy, judgment, or critical thinking—and the service provided tends to stink. “Detecting complaints is an AI problem. Sending the complaints to the correct customer service entity is an AI problem,” said one unnamed Pew respondent described as a university professor and researcher. “But customer service itself is a human problem.”

We cannot do modern science unless it's open
No one will write code for a competitor but many will write to interoperate with a collaborator. We got to know each other, and in 2005 most of us met at the American Chemical Society (ACS) under the blue obelisk in San Diego. I suggested we form a close, informal community under the label Blue Obelisk and that we adopt the mantra: open data, open standards, open source (ODOSOS). We have a mailing list and at intervals I buy Blue Obelisks as awards for publicly valuable contributions. There's a communal agreement to interoperate but no downwards control. It just happens in its own way and at its own speed. We reviewed 5 years on and had 20 groups authoring the paper, which is a remarkable achievement for a very conservative discipline (chemistry) where established companies are more valued than innovation.

When Payment Processing Becomes A Commodity
A catalyst for a commoditization of payment processing is the introduction of cryptocurrencies and new payment protocols like bitcoin and Ripple, which renders clearing obsolete and dramatically lowers the transaction cost for merchants. As a comparison, the transaction cost for payments through Visa/Mastercard/PayPal is ranging between 3-5 percent depending on the transaction size. The transaction cost for bitcoin on the other side is as low as 1 percent with continuing efforts to reduce transaction fees from the bitcoin community. To accelerate the development Bitpay recently announced removed the transaction fees on the starter plan, offering free unlimited payment processing to merchants accepting BitCoin.

New devices run on Wi-Fi signals alone
To find out exactly how the Wi-Fi backscatter devices work, Crave contacted Bryce Kellogg, a doctoral student in electrical engineering and co-author on the research, which will be published at the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Data Communication's annual conference this month in Chicago. He explained that the gadgets function by either reflecting or not reflecting the Wi-Fi signal running between say, a router and a laptop. That interruption in the signal can be then be read by software on the laptop much in the same way binary code is interpreted.

When Data Joins The Dark Side
"Sometimes data goes dark because we're simply too busy to deal with it, so we push it to the side and ignore it," Colgan said. "Maybe we don't have the right tools to address the scale or speed, or to shine a light on the data." Alternatively, data can go dark when it's trapped in a repository -- a legacy archive, for instance -- that renders it difficult to access or analyze. "We have a lot of customers interested in migrating off legacy archives," said Colgan. "They're doing so for a couple of reasons: One, a number of archives are at end of life, and (customers) want to go to a more modern platform; two, they want to migrate to the cloud."

Enterprise Security: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Each year there are more than 50 million cyber attacks in the UK alone and this number is rising. It’s fast becoming evident that old security technologies are diminishing in effectiveness and holes are opening up in corporate security networks. In the paragraphs below I explore the good, the bad and the ugly to dispel some of the common myths around the enterprise security armoury. ... It’s become commonplace for employees to access corporate email via a mobile device. Often this is not a standard work-issue device and IT managers are challenged with managing multiple devices all with different operation systems.

The Latest Strategy in the Fight Against Offensive Social Media Content
Possibilities include using natural language filters to pick out tweets that are likely to be offensive and then quarantining the authors. Another is a peer review model in which people rate the offensiveness of tweets and those responsible for the content deemed most offensive are quarantined. But these approaches raise all kinds of practical questions: where should the cut-off lie between people who should be quarantined versus those who should not; how long should individuals be quarantined for and so on. And what of users simply reregister under another name?

15 Technologies Changing How Developers Work
A long time ago, developers wrote assembly code that ran fast and light. On good days, they had enough money in their budget to hire someone to toggle all those switches on the front of the machine to input their code. On bad days, they flipped the switches themselves. Life was simple: The software loaded data from memory, did some arithmetic, and sent it back. That was all. ... The work involved in telling computers what to do is markedly different than it was even five years ago, and it's quite possible that any Rip Van Winkle-like developer who slept through the past 10 years would be unable to function in the today's computing world. Everything seems to be changing faster than ever.

Mobile chips face lockdown to prevent hacks
A well-designed system can provide multiple layers to prevent malicious attacks and injection of rogue code, said Chandra, adding that the hardware, security subsystem and software on mobile hardware need to work together. Besides ARM, chip makers like Intel and AMD are working to bring more security features so mobile devices are shielded from attacks. The companies are knitting together hardware and software to work more cohesively in a system, and also establishing hypervisors, secure boot layers, and segmented areas -- much like sandboxes -- in which code could be executed without compromising a system.

The Importance of Putting People First
Undaunted, the new CEO (the founder’s son) explains that he may be new but the one thing he knows is that “Burridge’s is its staff,” and he intends to look out for their welfare. He sends the manager to make the call. A bit patrician perhaps (the series is set in the 1950s, after all), but it’s a reminder that there can be a human connection between employer and employee. It is in this light that I began to consider the recent announcement that Starbucks had forged an alliance with Arizona State University to make 40 online degree programs affordable for its employees.

Quote for the day:

"Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier." -- Charles F. Kettering

August 10, 2014

The Theory and Tragic Reality of IT Projects
It is still possible, and there are some shining gems produced this way, but most corporate software projects today involve groups of developers, often working in remote teams and with numerous personnel changes over the lifecycle of a piece of software. This type of project requires careful management, regardless of the programming language involved. Several different types of development model have evolved to cope with the challenges of creating software code that works well, is properly commented and can be updated later by people who weren't involved in writing the original program.

Cloud complexity hinders some enterprise adoption. So, what’s the answer?
The enterprise architect in me would suggest that the best solution for enterprises that are already hindered by architectural complexity without the presence of cloud computing is to get their respective “acts together” before they adopt cloud computing. However, the world does not work that way. In the real world, most enterprises would have to do a ton of work over many years to be perfectly ready to move easily to cloud-based platforms. The root issue is the ability to manage complexity, including the addition of applications (new and old) that will run on public cloud platforms. The trick is to think in terms of replacement, and not additions.

Why CIOs Must Rethink How They Measure Success
There’s only one problem: Most are measuring the wrong items. This became strikingly clear in a recent Forrester survey that asked CIOs, CFOs, and CMOs to define their top ten measurements of technological success. To say that the lists didn’t match would be an understatement. What CIOs considered the most important measurement, the percentage of projects that met or exceeded expectations, ranked fourth in the business leaders’ list. Conversely, the CMOs’ and CFOs’ most important metric, IT cost per business service, ranked fourth for the CIOs.

Artificial intelligence will not turn into a Frankenstein's monster
Yes, we do have lots of AI systems, like chess programs or automated financial transaction systems, or the software in driverless cars. And some are already smarter than most humans, like language translation systems. Some are as good as some humans, such as driverless cars or natural speech recognition systems and will soon be better than most humans. But none of this has brought about the end of civilisation (though I'm suspiciously eyeing the financial transaction systems). The reason is that these are all narrow-AI systems: very good at doing one thing.

To stop security breaches, kill the username and password
This is not a new idea. Far from it. The OpenID standard, for example, is basically the same concept, and there were others before. Meanwhile, the government has proposed its own solution, lovingly titled National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). OpenID found a fair bit of success when it comes to straightforward authentication tasks, but it's never been a player when it comes to online retail. Recently, major online identity companies like Janrain and Facebook have withdrawn support. (Facebook has launched its own authentication service, Facebook Connect.)

How Technology Can Fix 4 Big Problems of India
It has been predicted that some of the most fundamental problems in India like healthcare, food, water, and energy, are going to worsen alarmingly over the next three decades. Sure, the country has made a lot of progress over the last few decades, particularly since the economic reforms were initiated in 1991, but apparently, that’s way too little. Things have come to such that India’s most intricate issues are now likely to become almost impossible to handle unless something is done urgently. This will cause severe disruptions to lives and businesses. Maybe technology can help?

Microsoft blocking of old ActiveX not enough
App development rules for these environments are strict and the developers must pay Microsoft for the privilege of being a developer and of testing and hosting their apps. But the problems are far from insurmountable. For one thing, I see no reason why Microsoft would need to host anyone else's code. For another, Microsoft could set terms for allowing third parties into the system. One option would be for the Windows Update servers to serve code hosted on other vendors' servers. Or Microsoft could license Windows Update server software to the third parties to run on their own servers, and their installation process could configure the Windows Update client to look for updates on those servers as well. Or Microsoft could host the third party code

.NET CLR Injection: Modify IL Code during Run-time
Modifying .NET methods' MSIL codes during run-time is very cool, it helps to implement hooking, software protection, and other amazing stuff. That's why I want it, but there is a big challenge on the road -- the MSIL code could have been complied to native code by JIT-complier before we have a chance to modify; also the .NET CLR implementation is not documented and it changes during each version, we need a reliable and stable way without dependency to the exact memory layout.

Google's big-data tool, Mesa, holds petabytes of data across multiple servers
A Mesa implementation can hold petabytes of data, update millions of rows of data per second and field trillions of queries per day, Google says. Extending Mesa across multiple data centers allows the data warehouse to keep working even if one of the data centers fails. Google built Mesa to store and analyze critical measurement data for its Internet advertising business, but the technology could be used for other, similar data warehouse jobs, the researchers said. "Mesa ingests data generated by upstream services, aggregates and persists the data internally, and serves the data via user queries," the researchers wrote in a paper describing Mesa.

Enterprise Architecture: Don't Be a Fool with a Tool

As Viswanathan explains, there are three basic approaches to applying TOGAF: “The first approach is to baseline first, because it’s good for cleaning up messes. Second, target [business outcomes] first, which is best for greenfield companies.” But for many organizations, the mess is so bad that if they spent all their time on the baseline, they’d never achieve any business outcomes at all. For those organizations, Viswanathan recommends “some baseline, then target. Take an iterative approach. Take a pain point, create that slice of EA. Back the TOGAF cycle into that.”

Quote for the day:

"Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men & women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all." -- Brian Tracy