Category: Internet

Partly Cloudy: Hale

Video Citation-Mason Hale

Poem Lyrics-Mason Hale

http://flowdelic.org/archives/2009/04/partly-cloudy/

Partly Cloudy

We have a dream
A vision
An aspiration
To compute in the cloud
To pay as we go
To drink by the sip
To add cores at our whim
To write to disks with no end
To scale up with demand
And scale down when it ends
Elasticity
Scalability
Redundancy
Computing as a utility
This is our dream
Becoming reality

But…
There’s a hitch.
There’s a bump in the road
There’s a twist in the path
There’s a detour ahead on the way to achieving our goal

It’s the Database
Our old friend
He is set in his ways
He deals in transactions to keeps things consistent
He maintains the integrity of all his relations
He eats disks for breakfast
He hungers for RAM
He loves queries and joins, and gives each one a plan
He likes his schemas normal and strict
His changes are atomic
That is his schtick

He’s an old friend as I said
We all know him well
So it pains me to say that in this new-fangled cloud
He doesn’t quite fit

Image Courtesy: James C Pitt of NYT

Don’t get me wrong, our friend can scale as high as you want
But there’s a price to be paid
That expands as you grow
The cost is complexity
It’s more things to maintain
More things that can go wrong
More ways to inflict pain
On the poor DBA who cares for our friend
The one who backs him up and, if he dies, restores him again

I love our old friend
I know you do too
But it is time for us all to own up to the fact
That putting him into the cloud
Taking him out of the rack
Just causes us both more pain and more woe
So…
It’s time to move on
Time to learn some new tricks
Time to explore a new world that is less ACIDic

It’s time to meet some new friends
Those who were born in the cloud
Who are still growing up
Still figuring things out
There’s Google’s BigTable
and Werner’s SimpleDB
There’s Hive and HBase and Mongo and Couch
There’s Cassandra and Drizzle
And not to be left out
There’s Vertica and Aster if you want to spend for support
There’s a Tokyo Cabinet and something called Redis I’m told

It’s a party, a playgroup of newborn DB’s
They scale and expand, they re-partition with ease
They are new and exciting
And still flawed to be sure
But they’ll learn and improve, grow and mature

They are our future
We developers should take heed
If our databases can change, then maybe
Just maybe
So can we

( Ajay- Because Cloud Computing is really really 60’s time sharing , Dr G 🙂

SAP gets social media with micro-apps webinars

A commendable re design by SAP in it’s social media especially social media through Videos and Webinars

I especially like the cute graphics which sum up the Social Media presence for SAP- like their own personalized Twitter Buttons. see screenshots below

Christmas Carol: The Best Software (BI-Stats-Analytics)

There is no best software- they are just optimized for various constraints and tangible as well as intangible needs as defined for users.

  1. There is no best software- they are just optimized for various constraints and tangible as well as intangible needs as defined for users.  ( Image below Citation- support.sas.com )
  2. Price in products is defined as Demand divided by Supply. Sometimes this is Expected Demand over Expected Supply ( see Oil Prices) Everyone grumbles over prices but we pay what we think is fair. ( citation http://bm2.genes.nig.ac.jp/RGM2/index.php?ctv=Survival
  3. Prices in services are defined by value creation as well- Value= Benefit Divided by Cost  Benefits are tangible as in how much money it saves in fraud as well as intangible – how easy it is to start using JMP versus R Commander  Costs are Tangible- How much do we have to pay using our cheque book for this annual license or perpetual license or one time license or maintain contract or application support.Intangible costs are how long I have to hold the phone while talking to customer support and how much time it takes me to find the best solution using the website on my own without a sales person bothering me with frequent calls. (citation- http://academic.udayton.edu/gregelvers/psy216/spss/graphs.htm#tukey
  4. All sales people ( especially in the software industry) spam you with frequent calls, email reminders and how their company is the best company ever with the best software in the history of mankind. That is their job and they are pushed by sales quotas and pulled by their own enthusiasm to sell more to same customer. If you ever bought three licences and found out you just needed two at the end of the year- forgive the salesman. As Arthur Miller said’ All Salesmen are Dreamers  (Citation of STATA graph below http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/Stata/library/GraphExamples/code/grbartall.htm)
  5. Technology moves faster than you can say Jackie Robinson. and it is getting faster. Research and Development ( R and D) will always move slower than the speed at which Marketing thinks they can move. See http://www.dilbert.com for more insights on this. You either build a Billion Dollar in house lab ( like Palo Alto – remember) or you go for total outsourcing (like semi conductors and open source do). Or you go for a mix and match. ( Citation- http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~burkardt/html/matlab_graphics/matlab_graphics.html )

Based on the above parameters the best statistical software for 2009 continues to be the software that uses a mixture of Genetic Algorithms, Time Series Based Regression and Sampling – it is the software that runs in the head of the statistical /mathematical / customer BRAIN

Thats the best Software ever.

(Citation – Hugh of http://gapingvoid.com/ )

Happy Hols

Innovative ways of Calculus: Gifting a comic set for Christmas

If you though understanding Calculus was OMG so Freaking Tough-
here is an Artistic Way to read and improve your Maths.
Why Improve Maths.
Helps you while watching football and baseball with your BFF.

Helps you choose a very good looking mobile with an inexpensive mobile plan.
Helps you calculate the mortgage and credit card rates while reading the fine print.

Helps you get the Insurance or Health Insurance with

lowest premium over highest approval

Nopes- Maths is easy and inexpensive. You can read this for just 75 dollars. All six comics. Or gift it to someone you love who is having trouble with maths.
Screenshot-1
Screenshot Citation-

Manga Guides ( courtesy Japanese Civilization)
No Starch Press – helped by O Reilley Media Since 2004.
Sarah Blow- Founder of Girlly Geek Dom ( UK Based) (http://girlygeekdom.com/ )
Ajay Ohri- Founder of Dude of Data (KN, TN)  ( http://dudeofdata.com/ )