Video: The iPad In Action

Video: The iPad In Action

In the video below see Apple??s new Keynote app (built specifically for the iPad), as well as the new iBooks app, in action. As you can see, the device is very fast. Also note the Apple employee talking about using the iPad to make calls.

Zenbe Personal is Closing

a free gmail alternative is shutting down.

Zenbe Personal is Closing- Shareflow and Zenbe Mail Still Going Strong | The Zenbe.com Blog

Zenbe Personal, our green-bordered free email service, will be shutting down at the end of February.

In fact, we will be expanding Shareflow, with more features, more storage, and a simpler signup, all for free.

Why Hadoop Users Shouldn��t Fear Google��s New MapReduce Patent

On Google and the MapReduce Patent. Why Hadoop Users Shouldn��t Fear Google��s New MapReduce Patent ? GigaOM

Google, nearly six years since it first applied for it, has finally received a patent for its MapReduce parallel programming model. The question now is how this will affect the various products and projects that utilize MapReduce. If Google is feeling litigious, every database vendor leveraging MapReduce capabilities ? a list that includes Aster Data Systems, Greenplum and Teradata ? could be in trouble, as could Apache��s MapReduce-inspired Hadoop project. Hadoop is a critical piece of Yahoo��s web infrastructure, is the basis of Cloudera��s business model, and is the foundation of products like Amazon��s Elastic MapReduce and IBM��s M2 data-processing platform. Fortunately, for them, it seems unlikely that Google will take to the courts to enforce its new intellectual property. A big reason is that ��map�� and ��reduce�� functions have been part of parallel programming for decades, and vendors with deep pockets certainly could make arguments that Google didn��t invent MapReduce at all.

Help saving MySQL

An urgent message from Michael Widenius, the creator of MySQL, about MySQL project safety.

Help saving MySQL ? Many Interests BLOG

Oracle is trying to buy Sun, which the owner of MySQL project. The problem is, that without MySQL, Oracle would make a lot more money, thus there is a big issue about MySQL project safety. Please, read this message from Michael Widenius, the creator of MySQL, and decide if you want to help MySQL.

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I, Michael ��Monty�� Widenius, the creator of MySQL, is asking you urgently to help save MySQL from Oracle��s clutches. Without your immediate help Oracle might get to own MySQL any day now. By writing to the European Commission (EC) you can support this cause and help secure the future development of the product MySQL as an Open Source project.

What this text is about: - Summary of what is happening - What Oracle has not promised - Oracles past behavior with Open Source - Help spread this information (Jump to ��What I want to ask you to do��) - Example of email to send to the commission (Jump to ��send this to:��)

I have spent the last 27 years creating and working on MySQL and I hope, together with my team of MySQL core developers, to work on it for many more years.

Oracle is trying to buy Sun, and since Sun bought MySQL last year, Oracle would then own MySQL. With your support, there is a good chance that the EC (from which Oracle needs approval) could prevent this from happening or demand Oracle to change the terms for MySQL or give other guarantees to the users. Without your support, it might not. The EC is our last big hope now because the US government approved the deal while Europe is still worried about the effects.

Instead of just working out this with the EC and agree on appropriate remedies to correct the situation, Oracle has instead contacted hundreds of their big customers and asked them to write to the EC and require unconditional acceptance of the deal. According to what I been told, Oracle has promised to the customers, among other things, that ��they will put more money into MySQL development than what Sun did�� and that ��if they would ever abandon MYSQL, a fork will appear and take care of things��.

However just putting money into development is not proof that anything useful will ever be delivered or that MySQL will continue to be a competitive force in the market as it��s now.

As I already blogged before, a fork is not enough to keep MySQL alive for all future, if Oracle, as the copyright holder of MySQL, would at any point decide that they should kill MySQL or make parts of MySQL closed source.

Oracle claims that it would take good care of MySQL but let��s face the facts: Unlike ten years ago, when MySQL was mostly just used for the web, it has become very functional, scalable and credible. Now it��s used in many of the world��s largest companies and they use it for an increasing number of purposes. This not only scares but actually hurts Oracle every day. Oracle have to lower prices all the time to compete with MySQL when companies start new projects. Some companies even migrate existing projects from Oracle to MySQL to save money. Of course Oracle has a lot more features, but MySQL can already do a lot of things for which Oracle is often used and helps people save a lot of money. Over time MySQL can do to Oracle what the originally belittled Linux did to commercial Unix (roughly speaking).

So I just don��t buy it that Oracle will be a good home for MySQL. A weak MySQL is worth about one billion dollars per year to Oracle, maybe more. A strong MySQL could never generate enough income for Oracle that they would want to cannibalize their real cash cow. I don��t think any company has ever done anything like that. That��s why the EC is skeptic and formalized its objections about a month ago.

Richard Stallman agrees that it��s very important which company owns MySQL, that Oracle should not be allowed to buy it under present terms and that it can��t just be taken care of by a community of volunteers. http://keionline.org/ec-mysql

Oracle has NOT promised (as far as I know and certainly not in a legally binding manner):

- To keep (all of) MySQL under an open source license - Not to add closed source parts, modules or required tools. - To not raise MySQL license or MySQL support prices - To release new MySQL versions in a regular and timely manner. - To continue with dual licensing and always provide affordable commercial licenses to MySQL to those who needs them (to storage vendors and application vendors) or provide MySQL under a more permissive license - To develop MySQL as an Open Source project - To actively work with the community - Apply submitted patches in a timely manner - To not discriminate patches that make MySQL compete more with Oracles other products - To ensure that MySQL is improved also in manners that make it compete even more with Oracles�� main offering.

From looking at how Oracle handled the InnoDB acquisition, I don��t have high hopes that Oracle will do the above right if not required to do so:

For InnoDB: - Bug fixes where done (but this was done under a contractual obligation) - New features, like compression that was announced before acquisition, took 3 years to implement - No time tables or insight into development - The community where not allowed to participate in development - Patches from users (like Google) that would have increased performance was not implemented/released until after Oracle announced it was acquiring Sun. - Oracle started working on InnoDB+, a better ��closed source�� version of InnoDB - In the end Sun had to fork InnoDB, just to be able to improve performance.

It��s true that development did continue, but this was more to be able to continue using InnoDB as a pressure on MySQL Ab.

Note that Oracle��s development on the Linux kernel is not comparable with MySQL, because: - Oracle is using Linux as the main platform for their primary database product (and thus a better Linux makes Oracles platform better) - The GPL code in the kernel is not affecting what is running on top on it (because of an exception in Linux).

Because we don��t have access to a database of MySQL customers and users the only way we can get the word out is to use the MySQL and Open Source community. I would never have resorted to this if Oracle would not have broken the established rules in anticompetitive merger cases and try to influence the EC by actively mobilising the customers.

This is very critical to this AS SOON AS POSSIBLE as EC, depending on what Oracle is doing, needs to make a decision either on Monday (2009-12-14) or within two weeks. Becasue of the strict deadline, every email counts!

What I want to ask you to do (until 2009-12-19):

- Forward this email to everyone that you know is using MySQL or Open Source/free software and to all email list where you know there are people present that use or care about MySQL and open source (please check first that this email hasn��t been sent there before) - Alternatively send emails with information about this and tell them to read http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-saving-mysql.html - Add links on your web site to http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-saving-mysql.html with the text ��We are using MySQL, help save it��, for the duration of the next two week. - Blog about this (feel free to include this text or just link to my blog) - Call by phone (don��t contact by email, this is urgent) your boss or VP and ask him to read this email and send a letter to the EC commission ASAP! - If you don��t have anyone to contact above, send an email to the EC!

As we want the EC to get a correct picture of the situation, we want you to first fill in the upper part and then choose one of the proposed texts belowe that best matches your view of the situation. Feel free to supply your own text and additional information if you think this will help the EC to reach a better understanding of how MySQL is used.

Send this to: comp-merger-registry@ec.europa.eu

If you have extra time to help, fill in the following, if not, just skip to the main text.

Name: Title: Company: Size of company: How many MySQL installations: Total data stored in MySQL (megabyte): For what type of applications is MySQL used: Should this email be kept confidential by EC: Yes/No

Copy or use one of the below texts as a base for your answer:

a) I don��t trust that Oracle will take good care of MySQL and MySQL should be divested to another company or foundation that have everything to gain by developing and promoting MySQL. One should also in the future be able to combine MySQL with closed source application (either by exceptions, a more permissive license or be able to dual license MySQL under favourable terms)

b)

I think that Oracle could be a good steward of MySQL, but I would need EC to have legally binding guarantees from Oracle that: - All of MySQL will continue to be fully Open Source/free software in the future (no closed source modules). - Open Source version and dual-licensed version of MySQL should have same source (like today). - That development will be done in community friendly way. - The manual should be released under a permissive license (so that one can fork it, the same way one can fork the server) - That MySQL should be released under a more permissive license to ensure that forks can truly compete with Oracle if Oracle is not a good steward after all. Alternatively: - One should be able to always buy low priced commercial licenses for MySQL. - All of the above should be perpetual and irrevocable.

There should also be mechanism so that if Oracle is not doing what is expected of it, forks should be able to compete with Oracle

c) I trust Oracle and I suggest that EC will approve the deal unconditionally.

???????

Let us prove to Oracle and EC that the Open Source community is a true force and we take good care of our citizens and we prefer to work with companies that does the same!

The future of MySQL is in your hands!

Thanks for the help! Michael Widenius Creator of MySQL

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For more informations about this issue, please visit the Monty says blog.

About NVIDIA��s GigaThread Hardware Thread Scheduler

NVIDIA��s next generation GPU architecture has a lot for HPC to love | insideHPC.com

A big step forward in improving the application sweet spot for GPUs is the change in the way threads are scheduled. NVIDIA��s GigaThread Hardware Thread Scheduler (HTS) handles all of the task scheduling for developers who are now free to just throw tasks at the GPU without having to worry (as much) about packing the tasks together to efficiently manage the resource. The old architecture executed individual tasks one at a time (see image to the right) and had a relatively slow context switch, so developers had to be sure they sent large pieces of work to the GPU in order to get anything like good performance. The new HTS supports concurrent kernel execution and context switching that��s about an order of magnitude faster than before, so now much smaller units of work can be sent to the GPU. If you think of work kept on the CPU as the ��serial fraction,�� then these two changes should help move the Amdahl performance limit for GPU-accelerated applications further to the right.

In Firefox 3.6, extensions.checkcompatibility.3.6 is used instead of Extensions.checkCompatibility

Extensions.checkCompatibility - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

Starting with Gecko 1.9.2 applications (e.g., Firefox 3.6) this preference has been removed; a new preference that includes the application version, extensions.checkcompatibility. is used instead (bug 521905). “” includes alpha and beta milestones but excludes minor version updates.

Still some new tricks in Firefox 3.6 beta 3 - Mozilla Links

The extensions.checkCompatibility preference becomes less relaxed. In the past, it has been abused by users as a way to force incompatible extensions to work with newer Firefox versions. The preference is still there but it will have to be more explicit. For example to force them to work with Firefox 3.6, you wll have to add extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6 and set it to false. For future versions you will need to set extensions.checkCompatibility.3.7 to false and so on.

Java inefficiency prohibitive for Hadoop?

Mass-scale computing: Why Hadoop is hot but Java is not | VentureBeat

First, Java hogs extra resources (cache, memory, CPU cycles), a fact that doesn??t always show up well in single benchmark tests, but does show up clearly when multiple Java benchmarks compete for resources at the same time. This alone loses Java 15%, as tests I ran showed.

On top of that, on average, Java loses to C++ by about 15%, especially when apps can be compiled for mass-scale computing (use profile-guided compilation, etc). So you??re down 30% to start with by implementing a Java Hadoop app on top of the Java-based Hadoop infrastructure. Now, you don??t have to write your app in Java; you can use C++ or even script languages. See for example, why the Hypertable project chose C++. But unfortunately, the choice of Java for infrastructure and the bevy of available libraries is driving many people to use Java for Hadoop. Let??s look at what that means financially as we scale out increasingly.

Free trial for SQL Azure until November

Microsoft Offers Two Database Previews: SQL Server & SQL Azure - ReadWriteEnterprise

SQL Azure is a relational cloud database along the lines of Amazon’s SimpleDB (when it comes to the business model). In other words, it’s keyed towards providing pay-as-you-go scalability at a minimal infrastructure cost.

This trial is a key development for the Azure platform. The free trial lasts until November, after which it’ll cost $9.99/month for 1GB, or $99.99 for 10GB.

Goodbye MapReduce, Hello Cascading

a good post comparing Cascading and Pig.

Goodbye MapReduce, Hello Cascading | Engineering Rapleaf

The most recognizable competing product to Cascading is Pig, a Yahoo technology we also explored. Pig lets you specify batch queries in a neat SQL like syntax, but we found Pig unusable due to the inability to plug in custom input and output formats. One of the nicest things about Cascading is that it doesn��t restrict you in any way ? anything you can do via vanilla MapReduce you can do via Cascading. We like the fact that Cascading flows are all specified via a Java API rather than a SQL like language ? this makes it very natural to create custom functions and very complex workflows. And if some part of your workflow is really performance-critical, Cascading gives you the flexibility to hand-code that part of the workflow with a MapReduce job and plug it in as a custom Flow.

getters/setters considered evil?

a good read.

Go Ahead: Next Generation Java Programming Style | Code Monkeyism

No setters. Many Java developers automatically - sometimes with the evil help of an IDE - write setters for all fields in their classes. You should not use setters. Think about each setter you want to write, are they really necessary for your fields? Better create new copies of your objects if values change. And try to write code without getters either. Tell, don��t ask tells you more about the concept.