Tag: software

Free and Open Source cannot get basic economics correct

Nutch robots
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Before you rev up those keyboards, and shoot off a snarky comment- consider this statement- there are many ways to run (and ruin economies). But they still have not found a replacement for money. Yes Happiness is important. Search Engine is good.

So unless they start a new branch of economics with lots more motivational theory and psychology and lot less quant especially for open source projects, money ,revenue, sales is the only true measure of success in enterprise software. Particularly if you have competitors who are making more money selling the same class of software.

Popularity contests are for high school quarterbacks —so even if your open source software is popular in downloads, email discussions, stack overflow or Continue reading “Free and Open Source cannot get basic economics correct”

High Performance Analytics

Marry Big Data Analytics to High Performance Computing, and you get the buzzword of this season- High Performance Analytics.

It basically consists of Parallelized code to run in parallel on custom hardware, in -database analytics for speed, and cloud computing /high performance computing environments. On an operational level, it consists of software (as in analytics) partnering with software (as in databases, Map reduce, Hadoop) plus some hardware (HP or IBM mostly). It is considered a high margin , highly profitable, business with small number of deals compared to say desktop licenses.

As per HPC Wire- which is a great tool/newsletter to keep updated on HPC , SAS Institute has been busy on this front partnering with EMC Greenplum and TeraData (who also acquired  SAS Partner AsterData to gain a much needed foot in the MR/SQL space) Continue reading “High Performance Analytics”

Intel® Threading Challenge 2011 Software Contest

Logo of Intel, Jul 1968 - Dec 2005
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One more software contests for you, but in the sub million dollar prize range

http://software.intel.com/en-us/contests/intel-threading-challenge-2011/contests.php

Intel® Threading Challenge 2011 – Win a Trip to Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco

Intel® Threading Challenge 2011 is going BIG this year! After three exciting threading competitions, our fourth Threading Challenge is stepping up the excitement with a BIG Grand Prize, a trip to the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco (September 13-15, 2011).

Since 2008, the Intel® Threading Challenge has attracted developers of varying experience from around the world. The active participation from the community has made the Threading Challenge not only a great programming competition, but a great way for community members to engage with each other, trade threading tips, and discover new parallel programming resources.

Last year’s format of two competition levels, Master and Apprentice, generated great excitement and opened the Threading Challenge to a new group of participants. So, we are going to continue the competition with a Master level and Apprentice level, each competing for the Grand Prize for their level, as well as individual problem awards. We know you love a great challenge and great prizes, so our Threading Challenge Team is putting together some exciting threading problems for you.

Monday, April 18, 2011 – Threading Challenge 2011 (Phase 1) Launches (both levels) at 12:00 PM (noon PDT)– The competition for 2011 is very similar to last year’s, but read on whether you’re a previous participant or new to the Threading Challenge, so you will be aware of all elements of the competition and how to compete. Then, you can start threading your way to prizes today!

Choose the right level for you!

 

Threading Challenge 2011:

• Two levels available for entry: Apprentice & Master
• Phase 1: 3 problems in each level
• Phase 2: Stay tuned for details, coming in Autumn 2011
• We will award 1st, 2nd & 3rd place prizes for each problem in each level
• No overlap of problems and each level’s problems will be offered consecutively
• Participants have the option to use the Intel® Manycore Testing Lab (MTL), consisting of 40 cores, 80 threads
• To enter the Threading Challenge 2011, please read the Official Rules and register for the competition with link in the “To Enter” Section.

The Threading Challenge will be implemented in two phases, with the 1st Phase consisting of 3 problems in each level. The details of the 2nd Phase will be announced in September 2011. For Phase 1, a new problem in each level will be launched on the days listed below at 12:00 noon (PDT) and will be open for entry for 22 days (inclusive of the problem starting day), until closing on the final problem day at 12:00 noon (PDT).

Problem Start and Closing Dates (both Master and Apprentice levels):

Problem 1:
Starts: Monday, April 18, 2011 at 12:00pm (PDT)
Ends. Monday, May 9, 2011 at 12:00pm (PDT)

Problem 2:
Starts: Monday, May 9, 2011 at 12:00pm (PDT)
Ends: Monday, May 30, 2011 at 12:00pm (PDT)

Problem 3: (Due to U.S. Memorial Day Holiday, Problem 2 will start on Tuesday, May 31, 2011)
Starts: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 12:00pm (PDT)
Ends: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 12:00pm (PDT)

*All problems start and end at 12:00 noon (Pacific Daylight Time)

Contestants will have 22 days to complete their entry submission (solution only for Apprentice OR solution and write-up for Master) for each problem. You may enter ONLY 1 problem at a time and will need to choose which level (Apprentice or Master) you wish to participate in during each problem cycle. You will be awarded points based on your solution submitted. Be sure to take advantage of our threading resources and tools, and you may validate your solution (optional) using the Intel® Manycore Testing Lab to solve your problems and get involved in the dedicated forums to earn extra points.

Each problems winners will be announced on the site after the problem is closed, and Prizes will be awarded to those problem winners (see official rules for prize distribution information). The Grand Prize, a Trip to Intel® Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, will be awarded for each level to the participant that has the highest total points earned for the three problems in each level (i.e., highest total points for Master level problems and Apprentice level problems).

The Intel® Threading Challenge attracts some of the most talented developers in the world to solve parallelism code challenges. Now is your chance to take multithreading to the next level and possibly win great prizes. Demonstrate your threading expertise today!

More Details:

Intel® Threading Challenge 2011 is organized so any level of developer can have the opportunity to participate. Two levels of participation are available. The Apprentice level gives those just getting started in multithreading development a chance to try out and improve their threading skills. The Master level will be executed similarly to previous threading challenges, providing those with more experience a chance to test their skills and compete against other experienced developers.

Intel® Manycore Testing Lab – Available as Option for Threading Challenge 2011 Participants

This year competitors will have the optional opportunity to develop and validate their code using the Intel® Manycore Testing Lab. This 40-core, 80-thread development environment has the latest hardware and software available and will be used by this year’s judges to test the winning entries in Threading Challenge 2011 Phase 1.

The Intel® Manycore Testing Lab (MTL) will be made available to Threading Challenge 2011 contestants. Use of the MTL will give participants the opportunity to write and test their code on systems exactly configured to what the judges will be using to score submitted entries. No more guessing about if your code will build or how it will run. (There is no requirement to use the MTL for any part of the contest. It is strictly an optional alternative being made available to those that wish to use it.)

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Predictive Analytics World Conference –New York City and London, UK

Please use the following code  to get a 15% discount on the 2 Day Conference Pass:  AJAYNY11.

Predictive Analytics World Conference –New York City and London, UK

October 17-21, 2011 – New York City, NY (pawcon.com/nyc)
Nov 30 – Dec 1, 2011 – London, UK (pawcon.com/london)

Predictive Analytics World (pawcon.com) is the business-focused event for predictive analytics
professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, covering today’s commercial deployment of
predictive analytics, across industries and across software vendors. The conference delivers case
studies, expertise, and resources to achieve two objectives:

1) Bigger wins: Strengthen the business impact delivered by predictive analytics

2) Broader capabilities: Establish new opportunities with predictive analytics

Case Studies: How the Leading Enterprises Do It

Predictive Analytics World focuses on concrete examples of deployed predictive analytics. The leading
enterprises have signed up to tell their stories, so you can hear from the horse’s mouth precisely how
Fortune 500 analytics competitors and other top practitioners deploy predictive modeling, and what
kind of business impact it delivers.

PAW NEW YORK CITY 2011

PAW’s NYC program is the richest and most diverse yet, featuring over 40 sessions across three tracks
– including both X and Y tracks, and an “Expert/Practitioner” track — so you can witness how predictive
analytics is applied at major companies.

PAW NYC’s agenda covers hot topics and advanced methods such as ensemble models, social data,
search marketing, crowdsourcing, blackbox trading, fraud detection, risk management, survey analysis,
and other innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

WORKSHOPS: PAW NYC also features five full-day pre- and post-conference workshops that
complement the core conference program. Workshop agendas include advanced predictive modeling
methods, hands-on training, an intro to R (the open source analytics system), and enterprise decision
management.

For more see http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/newyork/2011/

PAW LONDON 2011

PAW London’s agenda covers hot topics and advanced methods such as risk management, uplift
(incremental lift) modeling, open source analytics, and crowdsourcing data mining. Case study
presentations cover campaign targeting, churn modeling, next-best-offer, selecting marketing channels,
global analytics deployment, email marketing, HR candidate search, and other innovative applications
that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

Join PAW and access the best keynotes, sessions, workshops, exposition, expert panel, live demos,
networking coffee breaks, reception, birds-of-a-feather lunches, brand-name enterprise leaders, and

industry heavyweights in the business.

For more see http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/london

CROSS-INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS

Predictive Analytics World is the only conference of its kind, delivering vendor-neutral sessions across
verticals such as banking, financial services, e-commerce, education, government, healthcare, high
technology, insurance, non-profits, publishing, social gaming, retail and telecommunications

And PAW covers the gamut of commercial applications of predictive analytics, including response
modeling, customer retention with churn modeling, product recommendations, fraud detection, online
marketing optimization, human resource decision-making, law enforcement, sales forecasting, and
credit scoring.

Why bring together such a wide range of endeavors? No matter how you use predictive analytics, the
story is the same: Predicatively scoring customers optimizes business performance. Predictive analytics
initiatives across industries leverage the same core predictive modeling technology, share similar project
overhead and data requirements, and face common process challenges and analytical hurdles.

RAVE REVIEWS:

“Hands down, best applied, analytics conference I have ever attended. Great exposure to cutting-edge
predictive techniques and I was able to turn around and apply some of those learnings to my work
immediately. I’ve never been able to say that after any conference I’ve attended before!”

Jon Francis
Senior Statistician
T-Mobile

Read more: Articles and blog entries about PAW can be found at http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/
pressroom.php

VENDORS. Meet the vendors and learn about their solutions, software and service. Discover the best
predictive analytics vendors available to serve your needs – learn what they do and see how they
compare

COLLEAGUES. Mingle, network and hang out with your best and brightest colleagues. Exchange
experiences over lunch, coffee breaks and the conference reception connecting with those professionals
who face the same challenges as you.

GET STARTED. If you’re new to predictive analytics, kicking off a new initiative, or exploring new ways
to position it at your organization, there’s no better place to get your bearings than Predictive Analytics
World. See what other companies are doing, witness vendor demos, participate in discussions with the
experts, network with your colleagues and weigh your options!

For more information:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com

View videos of PAW Washington DC, Oct 2010 — now available on-demand:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/online-video.php

What is predictive analytics? See the Predictive Analytics Guide:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/predictive_analytics.php

If you’d like our informative event updates, sign up at:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/signup-us.php

To sign up for the PAW group on LinkedIn, see:
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1005097

For inquiries e-mail regsupport@risingmedia.com or call (717) 798-3495.

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Contest for SAS Users and Students

Heres a new contest for SAS users. The prizes are books, so students should be interested as well.

From http://www.sascommunity.org/mwiki/images/b/bc/PointsforprizesRules.pdf

HOW TO ENTER: To qualify for entry, go to the sasCommunity.org web site located at http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Main_Page
between April 11, 2011 and May 9, 2011 and either add or edit valid content as described herein to earn award points.
Creation of a first time profile on www.sascommunity.org will earn 1,000 points. For each valid article creation or edit, 100
points will be earned. Articles and subsequent edits should adhere to the sasCommunity.org terms of use as outlined on
http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/sasCommunity:Terms_of_Use. All points’ accumulation will end at 5:00 PM GMT on
May 9, 2011 and only those points earned between 8:00 AM GMT on April 11, 2011 and 5:00 PM GMT on May 9, 2011
will be counted in this contest. Contest entries made through the Internet will be declared made by the registered user of
the sasCommunity.org profile account. Sponsor is not responsible for phone, technical, network, electronic, computer
hardware or software failures of any kind, misdirected, incomplete, garbled or delayed transmissions. Sponsor will not be
responsible for incorrect or inaccurate entry information, whether caused by entrants or by any of the equipment or
programming associated with or utilized in the contest.
ELIGIBILITY: The contest is open to all sasCommunity.org members 18 year of age or older on the start date of the
contest. Void where prohibited by law. Employees (including immediate family members and/or those living in the same 
household of each), the Sponsor, members of the sasCommunity.org Advisory Board, SAS Global Users Group Executive 
Board, their advertising, promotion and production agencies, the affiliated companies of each, and the immediate family 
members of each are not eligible. 

PRIZE: Three (3) prizes will be awarded based on total points accumulated during the contest as follows:
 1stPlace: 3 SAS®Press books - not to exceed $250 in combined retail value;
 2ndPlace: 2 SAS®Press books - not to exceed $150 in combined retail value; and
 3rdPlace: 1 SAS®Press book - not to exceed $100 in retail value.

What’s New

http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Main_Page

New Points for Prizes Contest
Points for Prizes Contest
Win SAS books!		 Contribute content or SAS code to sasCommunity.org for your chance to WIN! To qualify, simply add or edit articles between April 11, 2011 and May 9, 2011 (GMT). Creation of a first-time profile on sasCommunity.org gives you 1,000 points. For each valid article creation or edit, 100 points will be earned. The user with the most points collected during this time wins SAS Press Books!
Become a sasCommunity Guru
Thanks for Contributing to sasCommunity.org!
New sasCommunity.org Point System		 The sasCommunity support team has been hard at work adding new features and is pleased to announce a points system that recognizes each user’s contributions to the site. Every time you contribute by creating a page, updating it, or just doing a little wiki gardening, you earn points.Earning points is automatic and simple – all you have to do is contribute! Creating your account starts you with 1000 points and all the current users have been credited with points dating back to the site coming online in April 2007.
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Augustus- a PMML model producer and consumer. Scoring engine.

A Bold GNU Head
Image via Wikipedia

I just checked out this new software for making PMML models. It is called Augustus and is created by the Open Data Group (http://opendatagroup.com/) , which is headed by Robert Grossman, who was the first proponent of using R on Amazon Ec2.

Probably someone like Zementis ( http://adapasupport.zementis.com/ ) can use this to further test , enhance or benchmark on the Ec2. They did have a joint webinar with Revolution Analytics recently.

https://code.google.com/p/augustus/

Recent News

  • Augustus v 0.4.3.1 has been released
  • Added a guide (pdf) for including Augustus in the Windows System Properties.
  • Updated the install documentation.
  • Augustus 2010.II (Summer) release is available. This is v 0.4.2.0. More information is here.
  • Added performance discussion concerning the optional cyclic garbage collection.

See Recent News for more details and all recent news.

Augustus

Augustus is a PMML 4-compliant scoring engine that works with segmented models. Augustus is designed for use with statistical and data mining models. The new release provides Baseline, Tree and Naive-Bayes producers and consumers.

There is also a version for use with PMML 3 models. It is able to produce and consume models with 10,000s of segments and conforms to a PMML draft RFC for segmented models and ensembles of models. It supports Baseline, Regression, Tree and Naive-Bayes.

Augustus is written in Python and is freely available under the GNU General Public License, version 2.

See the page Which version is right for me for more details regarding the different versions.

PMML

Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) is an XML mark up language to describe statistical and data mining models. PMML describes the inputs to data mining models, the transformations used to prepare data for data mining, and the parameters which define the models themselves. It is used for a wide variety of applications, including applications in finance, e-business, direct marketing, manufacturing, and defense. PMML is often used so that systems which create statistical and data mining models (“PMML Producers”) can easily inter-operate with systems which deploy PMML models for scoring or other operational purposes (“PMML Consumers”).

Change Detection using Augustus

For information regarding using Augustus with Change Detection and Health and Status Monitoring, please see change-detection.

Open Data

Open Data Group provides management consulting services, outsourced analytical services, analytic staffing, and expert witnesses broadly related to data and analytics. It has experience with customer data, supplier data, financial and trading data, and data from internal business processes.

It has staff in Chicago and San Francisco and clients throughout the U.S. Open Data Group began operations in 2002.

Overview

The above example contains plots generated in R of scoring results from Augustus. Each point on the graph represents a use of the scoring engine and a chart is an aggregation of multiple Augustus runs. A Baseline (Change Detection) model was used to score data with multiple segments.

Typical Use

Augustus is typically used to construct models and score data with models. Augustus includes a dedicated application for creating, or producing, predictive models rendered as PMML-compliant files. Scoring is accomplished by consuming PMML-compliant files describing an appropriate model. Augustus provides a dedicated application for scoring data with four classes of models, Baseline (Change Detection) Models, Tree Models, Regression Models and Naive Bayes Models. The typical model development and use cycle with Augustus is as follows:

  1. Identify suitable data with which to construct a new model.
  2. Provide a model schema which proscribes the requirements for the model.
  3. Run the Augustus producer to obtain a new model.
  4. Run the Augustus consumer on new data to effect scoring.

Separate consumer and producer applications are supplied for Baseline (Change Detection) models, Tree models, Regression models and for Naive Bayes models. The producer and consumer applications require configuration with XML-formatted files. The specification of the configuration files and model schema are detailed below. The consumers provide for some configurability of the output but users will often provide additional post-processing to render the output according to their needs. A variety of mechanisms exist for transmitting data but user’s may need to provide their own preprocessing to accommodate their particular data source.

In addition to the producer and consumer applications, Augustus is conceptually structured and provided with libraries which are relevant to the development and use of Predictive Models. Broadly speaking, these consist of components that address the use of PMML and components that are specific to Augustus.

Post Processing

Augustus can accommodate a post-processing step. While not necessary, it is often useful to

  • Re-normalize the scoring results or performing an additional transformation.
  • Supplements the results with global meta-data such as timestamps.
  • Formatting of the results.
  • Select certain interesting values from the results.
  • Restructure the data for use with other applications.
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Libre Office turns six

On September 28th, 2010, The Document Foundation was announced. The last six months, it feels, have just passed within a short glimpse of time. Not only did we release three LibreOffice versions within three months, have created the LibreOffice-Box DVD image, and brought LibreOffice Portable on its way. We also have announced the LibreOffice Conference for October 2011 and have taken part in lots of events worldwide, with FOSDEM and CeBIT being the most prominent ones.

People follow us at Twitter, Identi.ca, XING, LinkedIn and a Facebook group and fan page, they discuss on our mailing lists with more than 6.000 subscriptions, collaborate in our wiki, get insight on our daily work in our blog, and post and blog themselves. From the very first day, openness, transparency and meritocracy have been shaping the framework we want to work in. Our discussions and decisions take place on a public mailing list, and regularly, we hold phone conferences for the Steering Committee and for the marketing teams, where everyone is invited to join. Our ideas and visions have made their way into our Next Decade Manifesto.

We have joined the Open Invention Network as well as the OpenDoc Society, and just last week have become an SPI-associated project, and we see a wide range of support from all over the world. Not only do Novell and Red Hat support our efforts with developers, but just recently, Canonical, creators of Ubuntu, joined as well. All major Linux distributions deliver LibreOffice with their operating systems, and more follow every day.

One of the most stunning contributions, that still leaves us speechless, is the support that we receive from the community. When we asked for 50,000 € capital stock for a German-based foundation, the community showed their support, appreciation and their power, and not only donated it in just eight days, but up to now has supported us with close to 100,000 €! Another one is that driven by our open, vendor neutral approach, combined with our easy hacks, we have included code contributions from over 150 entirely new developers to the project, alongside localisations from over 50 localizers. The community has developed itself better than we could ever dream of, and first meetings like the project’s weekend or the QA meeting of the Germanophone group are already being organized.

What we have seen now is just the beginning of something very big. The Document Foundation has a vision, and the creation of the foundation in Germany is about to happen soon. LibreOffice has been downloaded over 350,000 times within the first week, and we just counted more than 1,3 million downloads just from our download system — not counting packages directly delivered by Linux distributors, other download sites or DVDs included in magazines and newspapers — supported by 65 mirrors from all over the world, and millions already use and contribute to it worldwide. With our participation in the Google Summer of Code, we will engage more students and young developers to be part of our community. Our improved release schedule will ensure that new features and improvements will make their way to end-users soon, and for testers, we even provide daily builds.

We are so excited by what has been achieved over the last six months, and we are immensely grateful to all those who have supported the project in whatever ways they can. It is an honour to be working with you, to be part of one united community! The future as we are shaping it has just begun, and it will be bright and excellent.

 

from-

List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/announce/

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