Update on Google Wave
8/04/2010 02:00:00 PM
We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users’ lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow"

I am really wondering why google is going to drop such a wonderful project. Ofcourse, as expected no one is using the wave.

3. Google could have integrated all these to their existing webmail interface. Because no one wants to open another tab just to communicate through wave.

This cable is a consortium of 16 companies (including Airtel and Tata Communications) and carries telecommunications between Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.

So guys, don’t get agitated if your net goes slow in the coming days until the repair is complete.

Labor and resources are cheap here in India, but why ? Are we importing something for cost to shootup like this? The answer is, we are are simply wasting Bandwidth and paying more for it.

Why do we host a website in a server in US, while most of its customers are in INDIA?.

If we need to host here, we need more reliable datacenters here. So why there is not much datacenters here ? The answer would be bandwidth and connectivity. Since bandwidth cost is high here, we try to host servers in US, which will again increase the network traffic to US. Its a chain process and I am pretty sure we are not in the right path, which will end in a permanent solution.

ISPs here cannot reduce their cost because international bandwidth is a bit costly for them too, which restricts them to reduce bandwidth cost beyond a limit. But they are charging the same for local traffic and international traffic, where local we have got TERABYTES of bandwidth and international which is limited. It is like paying ISD rates for all calls.

My opinion as a solution for this problem is, our ISPs should start providing bandwidth based on traffic, whether it is local or international. They can give local bandwidth at very cheap prices, even cheaper than US and international can remain the same. Once this is accomplished, more datacenter startups will emerge here and there would be great difference in the international traffic.

Also there is much difference in response times,

To a Website Hosted in US

time=326 ms

To a Website Hosted in India

time=51.7 ms

So now I think If we get such a plan from Any ISPs here, I could even go for a startup in this field , What do you think ?

Felt bad when I saw this. I dont know why this happened, but I am sure we will make it next time

I was thinking what is this Cryogenic technology, that makes it so complex for us ?

A cryogenic rocket engine is a rocket engine that uses a cryogenic fuel and/or oxidizer, that is, its fuel and/or oxidizer are gasses liquified at cryogenic temperatures.

The use of liquid fuel rocket engines was first considered by the German, American and Soviet engineers independently, and all discovered that rocket engines need high mass flow rate for both liquid oxidizer and fuel, for generating the necessary thrust. Higher thrust levels were achieved when liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid hydrocarbon were used as fuel. At room temperature and pressure, oxygen and low molecular weight hydrocarbons are in gaseous state. To get the required mass flow rate, the only option is to feed them to the engine in liquid form. Therefore, they are converted to liquid form by cooling them down, and are stored in the rocket’s fuel tanks at very low temperatures. Hence engines that use these fuels are called cryogenic rocket engines.

Various cryogenic fuel-oxidizer combinations have been tried, but the liquid oxygen (LOX) oxidizer and liquid hydrogen (LH2) fuel combination is one of the most widely used. Both components are easily and cheaply available, bio-friendly, non-corrosive and when burned have the highest entropy release by combustion, among all non-toxic pairs. Liquefaction temperature of oxygen is 89 kelvins and at this temperature LOX achieves a density of 1,140 kg/m3 (1.14 g/cm3). And, for hydrogen it is 20 kelvins, a few kelvins above absolute zero, and gains a density of 70 kg/m3 (70 mg/cm3). All cryogenic rocket engines work on expander cycle or gas-generator cycle or staged combustion cycle depending on thrust requirement, since the oxidizer and fuel are at sub-zero temperatures. LOX LH2 cryogenic rocket engines produce specific impulse up to 450 s (4.4 kN·s/kg).

And see the list ajax search brought!!!

You can download the script from http://sourceforge.net/projects/servtweet

Installation

Installation is pretty easy. The first thing you need an extra Twitter account for monitoring. Once it is created you can continue with the steps.

1. cd /usr/local/src/
2. Download the tar file from http://sourceforge.net/projects/servtweet/
3. tar -zxf servtweet.tar.gz
4. cd servtweet/
5. sh install.sh
6. Enter the Details Requested by the script.
7. Done, Just follow the twitter account, you will be getting tweets from the server in case of
Load Spikes
Apache Failure
DNS Failure
SMTP/POP Failure

Happy Twitting.

NOTE: Contact me if there is any bugs !!

Create the user with the home directory as the root of what they can access
Give the user a password
Make their primary group psacln
Add them to the psaserv group as well
# useradd username -d /path/to/home/directory/
# echo “password” | passwd username –stdin
Changing password for user username.
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
# usermod -g psacln username
# usermod -G psaserv username

This makes me think of our miserable and short life, full of happenings that comes as waves. Some keep us comfortable and others that might even take us down. I do believe that everything happens for a reason, so I guess this has also got something to do with my life, and probably his.

Yes, its true that many changes took place in the past few years, and it would change the same way the coming years also. But as everyone does, I too wish if I could hold those good moments without any change.

You just need to configure two csf directives, thats it.

The two directives are PORTFLOOD and SYNFLOOD.

SYNFLOOD

SYNFLOOD is disabled by default. If you are not receiving any sort of attack, there is no need to enable it. If you are expecting an attack, enable it and set the rules a bit strict, like

SYNFLOOD = “1″

SYNFLOOD_RATE = “30/s”

SYNFLOOD_BURST = “10″

i.e. if 30 connections are received from an IP/sec for 10 times, block it. Make sure don’t keep it too strict if you are not receiving an attack else it will generate false positives and will block legit connections.

PORTFLOOD

PORTFLOOD = 80;tcp;100;5,22;tcp;5;300

ie, If an IP makes 100 connections in 5 sec to port 80 (tcp), then it will be blocked from the server and if 5 connections in 300 sec to 22 port.

PORTFLOOD = 80;tcp;100;5,22;tcp;5;300

ie, If an IP makes 100 connections in 5 sec to port 80 (tcp), then it will be blocked from the server and if 5 connections in 300 sec to 22 port.

For those who does not know the exact story, it is well described here. 

Sagar hotel hidden camera issue

I too felt bad about it, as a proud Indian I decided to report it as abuse. Guess what, within a day I got the below reply from orkut.

Hi പ്രജി << Praji,

Thank you for your reporting of abuse on Orkut on “2010-03-10″. Based on our review and consideration of Orkut’s terms of service, we understand that this content does not currently break any policies on Orkut. If you believe that a mistake has been made, please re-submit your complaint with additional information to help our support team better understand your concerns with this content. For further information regarding our policies on Orkut, please refer to link below. http://help.orkut.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16198&hl=en-US&p=email

Content reviewed: “->I HATE MAHATMA GANDHI<-”

And according to orkut, below given conditions are violating their policy.

Nudity or Sexually Explicit Material

Malicious content

Violent behavior

Hate speech

Age

Impersonation

Private and Confidential Information

Copyright

Illegal Activities

Spam, Malware, and Phishing

Now I wonder, under which this comes in http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community?cmm=55635762

The network,features and tarrif seems to be promising and I think soon everyone will switch to this.

I am using E63 and I am able to make video calls and browse internet at around 400kbps speed. But their unlimited data plan costs about 3000/- per month.

Also network connectivity is limited. Its only launched here in calicut and kannur, but soon it will be extended to other cities too.

ഇതൊക്കെ ആണെങ്കിലും യതാര്‍ഥത്തില്‍ keyboard ആയിരുന്നു പ്രശ്നകാരന്‍. US keyboard കണ്ടു വളര്‍ന്ന നമ്മള്‍ മലയാളത്തില്‍ ടൈപ്പ് ചെയ്യാന്‍ ശെരിക്കും കഷ്ടപെട്ടു. എന്നാല്‍ നമ്മള്‍ മലയാളം ഇംഗ്ലീഷില്‍ ടൈപ്പ് ചെയ്യാന്‍ തുടങ്ങി. ഇതിനു ഒരു പോംവഴി ആയി ആരോ കണ്ടു പിടിച്ച ഒരു സൂത്രമാണ് മംഗ്ലീഷ് ടൈപ്പിംഗ്‌.

ഈ സൂത്രം ആദ്യം വന്നത് ചില സൈറ്റുകളില്‍ ആണെങ്കിലും , പിന്നീടു ജിമെയില്‍ മുതലായ വെബ്മൈല്‍ ധാതാകളും തന്നു തുടങ്ങി.

മലയാളം മറകുന്ന മലയാളിക്ക് ഇതു ഒരു നേട്ടമായി കരുതാന്‍ പറ്റുമോ എന്നറിയില്ല

For those who have not yet seen this,

Yes, I stared using wave. What next? What about the other features of Wave. What about embedding it in our website. Oh yaa.. I guess we have to wait more for that.

Anyway, Its pretty easy I guess. For wordpress user a plugin is ready, with which we can easily embed waves.

You can download this plugin HERE But you would probably need a developer wave account for this to work, as of now.

A full specification is available at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910overview

• Gnome 2.28
• Upstart (faster booting)
• Empathy IM (replaces Pidgin)
• New login manager
• Quickly (easier application development)
• Ubuntu One (cloud-based sharing and storage)
• Linux Kernel 2.6.31
• Changes to power management
• New Intel video driver architecture
• Ext4 file system default
• Grub 2 default

So what are you waiting for. Click here to download your copy.

You could even request  your free copy here .

Windows 7 is the latest version of Microsoft Windows, a

s

eries of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs and media center PCs.Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and general retail availability on October 22, 2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista.

Windows 7’s server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time.

Unlike its predecessor, which introduced a large number of new features, Windows 7 is intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to the Windows line, with the goal of being fully compatible with applications and hardware with which Windows Vista is already compatible. Presentations given by Microsoft in 2008 focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, including Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are not included in Windows 7; some are instead offered separately as part of the free Windows Live Essentials suite.

Windows 7 is the latest version of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs and media center PCs^. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and general retail availability on October 22, 2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7’s server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time.

Unlike its predecessor, which introduced a large number of new features, Windows 7 is intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to the Windows line, with the goal of being fully compatible with applications and hardware with which Windows Vista is already compatible. Presentations given by Microsoft in 2008 focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, including Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are not included in Windows 7; some are instead offered separately as part of the free Windows Live Essentials suite.

The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks. The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons. To the far right of the system clock is a small rectangular button that serves as the Show desktop icon. This button is part of the new feature in Windows 7 called Aero Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop. In touch-enabled displays such as touch screens, tablet PCs, etc., this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a finger. Clicking this button minimizes all windows, and clicking it a second time restores them. Additionally, there is a feature named Aero Snap, that automatically maximizes a window when it is dragged to either the top or left/right edges of the screen. This also allows users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen to compare them. When a user moves windows that are maximized, the system restores their previous state automatically. This functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Unlike in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aero applied. Instead, they remain transparent.

The Windows 7 taskbar

.

For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP-based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET-based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages, and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB. Microsoft is also implementing better support for solid-state drives, including the new TRIM command, and Windows 7 will be able to identify a solid-state drive uniquely. Microsoft is also planning to support USB 3.0 in a subsequent patch, although support was not included in the initial release because of delays in the finalization of the standard.^[52]

Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7. Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.

Users also are able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform. Windows 7 includes 13 additional sound schemes, titled Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savanna, and Sonata. A new version of Virtual PC, Windows Virtual PC Beta is available for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. It allows multiple Windows environments, including Windows XP Mode, to run on the same machine, requiring the use of Intel VT-x or AMD-V. Windows XP Mode runs Windows XP in a virtual machine and redirects displayed applications running in Windows XP to the Windows 7 desktop. Furthermore Windows 7 supports the mounting of a virtual hard disk (VHD) as a normal data storage, and the bootloader delivered with Windows 7 can boot the Windows system from a VHD. The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) of Windows 7 is also enhanced to support real-time multimedia application including video playback and 3D games. That means that Direct X 10 can be used in a remote desktop environment. The three application limit will be removed from Windows 7 Starter.

This is the words that most of the webhosts hear from their customers these days. Anyway I would like to explain here, how and why these kinds of attacks are done.

The first point that I would like to share with you is that, it is NOT a server issue.

The main reason for such an attack is either

1. A Vulnerable code.  Most of the websites use CMS such as wordpress/joomla etc. If they are not updated properly, you are likely to have attacked.

2. A weak ftp password, that can be easily cracked by bruteforcing.

3. A clinet Pc ( Windows) being infected by virus and this is the most common way I have seen so far.

Working

I am not explaining here the first two methods as they are self explanatory. The third one works as mentioned below.

It startes with a google search. When someone searches for something in google, probably infected websites or even attackers website itself pops up in results.

When the user click on this, his pc gets infected with the virus.

If he is a webmaster, when he tries to upload or edit contents of his website, the virus code is also injected.

So what does this injected code do ?

The basic idea is that an code loads the content of an external site(Virus website) into the site, sets the external content to be invisible and then overlays the page you’re looking at. When you click a link you see on the current page, you are in fact clicking on the externally loaded page and about to load pretty much whatever the attacker wants.

Thus it propagates from client Pc to Pc.

Got Infected..What to do now!!

If you have a good backup, you are saved. Else you have to contact someone to write some kind of script to remove the injected code. The sad part is, I have seen many hexadecimal code which does’nt have any pattern. In this case it is extremely difficult if your site is having thousands of webpages.

Also, I have seem some attacks, where the original content is replaced. In that case, if you do not have any backups there is no other way than to contact developer to rebuild the website.

How to Avoid

The basic steps that is to be done to prevent this type of attack in future are

1. Install software from the latest version of the developer’s site manually.
2. Check this site periodically or use any built in update functions the script may have to ensure you are running the latest version.
3. Stay up to date with news the developers may post or any exploits posted on security sites such as http://www.securityfocus.com/. Some times developers just can’t patch their software fast enough, some developers can’t even fix the exploits in their software between versions.

4. Use a good antivirus software in your PC. ( Anyway Linux users dont have to worry about this !!!)

Grid computing—”a form of distributed computing whereby a ’super and virtual computer’ is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks”;

Indeed, many cloud computing deployments as of 2009 depend on grids, have autonomic characteristics, and bill like utilities—but cloud computing tends to expand what is provided by grids and utilities.me successful cloud architectures have little or no centralized infrastructure or billing systems whatsoever, including peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent and Skype, and volunteer computing such as SETI@home.

Furthermore, many analysts are keen to stress the evolutionary, incremental pathway between grid technology and cloud computing, tracing roots back to application service providers (ASPs) in the 1990s and the parallels to SaaS, often referred to as applications on the cloud. Some believe the true difference between these terms is marketing and branding; that the technology evolution was incremental and the marketing evolution discrete.

Characteristics

Cloud computing customers do not generally own the physical infrastructure serving as host to the software platform in question. Instead, they avoid capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use. Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed, while others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing “perishable and intangible” computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not unnecessarily left idle (which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development). A side effect of this approach is that overall computer usage rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits. Additionally, “increased high-speed bandwidth” makes it possible to receive the same response times from centralized infrastructure at other sites.

Economics

Diagram showing economics of cloud computing versus traditional IT, including capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx)

Cloud computing users can avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use. Consumption is usually billed on a utility (e.g. resources consumed, like electricity) or subscription (e.g. time based, like a newspaper) basis with little or no upfront cost. A few cloud providers are now beginning to offer the service for a flat monthly fee as opposed to on a utility billing basis. Other benefits of this time sharing style approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overhead, and immediate access to a broad range of applications. Users can generally terminate the contract at any time (thereby avoiding return on investment risk and uncertainty) and the services are often covered by service level agreements (SLAs) with financial penalties.

According to Nicholas Carr, the strategic importance of information technology is diminishing as it becomes standardized and less expensive. He argues that the cloud computing paradigm shift is similar to the displacement of electricity generators by electricity grids early in the 20th century.Although companies might be able to save on upfront capital expenditures, they might not save much and might actually pay more for operating expenses. In situations where the capital expense would be relatively small, or where the organization has more flexibility in their capital budget than their operating budget, the cloud model might not make great fiscal sense. Other factors impacting the scale of any potential cost savings include the efficiency of a company’s data center as compared to the cloud vendor’s, the company’s existing operating costs, the level of adoption of cloud computing, and the type of functionality being hosted in the cloud.

Architecture

The majority of cloud computing infrastructure, as of 2009 consists of reliable services delivered through data centers and built on servers with different levels of virtualization technologies. The services are accessible anywhere that provides access to networking infrastructure. Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers’ computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers and typically offer SLAs. Open standards are critical to the growth of cloud computing, and open source software has provided the foundation for many cloud computing implementations

History

The Cloud is a term that borrows from telephony. Up to the 1990s, data circuits (including those that carried Internet traffic) were hard-wired between destinations. Subsequently, long-haul telephone companies began offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) service for data communications. Telephone companies were able to offer VPN-based services with the same guaranteed bandwidth as fixed circuits at a lower cost because they could switch traffic to balance utilization as they saw fit, thus utilizing their overall network bandwidth more effectively. As a result of this arrangement, it was impossible to determine in advance precisely which paths the traffic would be routed over. The term “telecom cloud” was used to describe this type of networking, and cloud computing is conceptually somewhat similar.

The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to 1960, when John McCarthy opined that “computation may someday be organized as a public utility”; indeed it shares characteristics with service bureaus that date back to the 1960s. Ramnath K. Chellappa defined it as a computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits.The term cloud had already come into commercial use in the early 1990s to refer to large Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks. By the turn of the 21st century, the term “cloud computing” began to appear more widely, although most of the focus at that time was limited to SaaS.

In 1999, Salesforce.com was established by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, and their associates. They applied many technologies developed by companies such as Google and Yahoo! to business applications. They also provided the concepts of “on demand” and SaaS with their real business and successful customers. The key for SaaS is that it is customizable by customers with limited technical support required. Business users have enthusiastically welcomed the resulting flexibility and speed.

In the early 2000s, Microsoft extended the concept of SaaS through the development of web services. IBM detailed these concepts in 2001 in the Autonomic Computing Manifesto, which described advanced automation techniques such as self-monitoring, self-healing, self-configuring, and self-optimizing in the management of complex IT systems with heterogeneous storage, servers, applications, networks, security mechanisms, and other system elements that can be virtualized across an enterprise.

Amazon played a key role in the development of cloud computing by modernizing their data centers after the dot-com bubble which, like most computer networks, were using as little as 10% of their capacity at any one time just to leave room for occasional spikes. Having found that the new cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements whereby, small, fast-moving “two-pizza teams” could add new features faster and easier, Amazon started providing access to their systems through Amazon Web Services on a utility computing basis in 2005.

In 2007, Google, IBM, and a number of universities embarked on a large scale cloud computing research project.By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud computing “to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them”,and observed that “[o]rganisations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models” so that the “projected shift to cloud computing … will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and in significant reductions in other areas.”

Political issues

The Cloud spans many borders and “may be the ultimate form of globalization.”As such, it becomes subject to complex geopolitical issues, and providers are pressed to satisfy myriad regulatory environments in order to deliver service to a global market. This dates back to the early days of the Internet, when libertarian thinkers felt that “cyberspace was a distinct place calling for laws and legal institutions of its own”.

Despite efforts (such as US-EU Safe Harbor) to harmonize the legal environment, as of 2009[update], providers such as Amazon Web Services cater to major markets (typically the United States and the European Union) by deploying local infrastructure and allowing customers to select “availability zones.”Nonetheless, concerns persist about security and privacy from individual through governmental levels (e.g., the USA PATRIOT Act, the use of national security letters, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act’s Stored Communications Act.

Legal issues

In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term “cloud computing” (U.S. Trademark 77,139,082) in the United States. The “Notice of Allowance” the company received in July 2008 was cancelled in August, resulting in a formal rejection of the trademark application less than a week later.

In September 2008, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a “Notice of Allowance” to CGactive LLC (U.S. Trademark 77,355,287) for “CloudOS”. As defined under this notice, a cloud operating system is a generic operating system that “manage[s] the relationship between software inside the computer and on the Web”, such as Microsoft Azure[30].

In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License, a version of GPLv3 intended to close a perceived legal loophole associated with Free software designed to be run over a network, particularly SaaS. An application service provider is required to release any changes they make to Affero GPL open source code.[citation needed]

Control issues

The founder and president of the Free Software Foundation Richard Stallman has warned people that cloud computing will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time.

Key characteristics

• Agility improves with users able to rapidly and inexpensively re-provision technological infrastructure resources. The cost of overall computing is unchanged, however, and the providers will merely absorb up-front costs and spread costs over a longer period..

• Cost is claimed to be greatly reduced and capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure. This ostensibly lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house). Some would argue that given the low cost of computing resources, that the IT burden merely shifts the cost from in-house to outsourced providers. Furthermore, any cost reduction benefit must be weighed against a corresponding loss of control, access and security risks.

• Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they are using (e.g., PC, mobile). As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere.

• Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing for:

  • Centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.)

  • Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels)

  • Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilized.

• Reliability improves through the use of multiple redundant sites, which makes cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.Nonetheless, many major cloud computing services have suffered outages, and IT and business managers can at times do little when they are affected.

• Scalability via dynamic (“on-demand”) provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis near real-time, without users having to engineer for peak loads. Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely-coupled architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface.

• Security typically improves due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security is often as good as or better than under traditional systems, in part because providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford. Providers typically log accesses, but accessing the audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible.

• Sustainability comes about through improved resource utilization, more efficient systems, and carbon neutrality. Nonetheless, computers and associated infrastructure are major consumers of energy.

Layers

Clients

See also category: Cloud clients

A cloud client consists of computer hardware and/or computer software which relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or which is specifically designed for delivery of cloud services and which, in either case, is essentially useless without it.For example:

• Mobile (Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile)

• Thin client (CherryPal, Zonbu, gOS-based systems)

• Thick client / Web browser (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, WebKit)

Application

See also category: Cloud applications

A cloud application leverages cloud computing in software architecture, often eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, thus alleviating the burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. For example:

• Peer-to-peer / volunteer computing (BOINC, Skype)

• Web applications (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)

• Security as a service (MessageLabs, Purewire, ScanSafe, Zscaler)

• Software as a service (Google Apps, Salesforce, Cool Life Systems, SpringCM)

• Software plus services (Microsoft Online Services)

• Storage [Distributed]

  • Content distribution (BitTorrent, Amazon CloudFront)

  • Synchronisation (Live Mesh)

[Platform

See also category: Cloud platforms

A cloud platform (PaaS) delivers a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service, generally consuming cloud infrastructure and supporting cloud applications. It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. For example:

• Services

  • Identity (OAuth, OpenID)

  • Payments (Amazon Flexible Payments Service, Google Checkout, PayPal)

  • Search (Alexa, Google Custom Search, Yahoo! BOSS)

  • Real-world (Amazon Mechanical Turk)

• Solution stacks

  • Java (Google App Engine)

  • PHP (Rackspace Cloud Sites)

  • Python Django (Google App Engine)

  • Ruby on Rails (Heroku)

  • .NET (Azure Services Platform, Rackspace Cloud Sites)

  • Proprietary (Force.com, WorkXpress, Wolf Frameworks)

• Storage [Structured]

  • Databases (Amazon SimpleDB, BigTable)

  • File storage (Amazon S3, Nirvanix, Rackspace Cloud Files)

  • Queues (Amazon SQS)

Infrastructure

See also category: Cloud infrastructure

Cloud infrastructure (IaaS) is the delivery of computer infrastructure, typically a platform virtualization environment, as a service. For example:

• Compute (Amazon CloudWatch, RightScale)

  • Physical machines (Softlayer)

  • Virtual machines (Amazon EC2, GoGrid, Rackspace Cloud Servers, Terremark Enterprise Cloud)

  • OS-level virtualisation

• Network (Amazon VPC)

• Storage [Raw] (Amazon EBS)

Servers

The servers layer consists of computer hardware and/or computer software products which are specifically and soley designed for the delivery of cloud services.For example:

• Fabric computing (Cisco UCS)

Architecture

Cloud computing sample architecture

Cloud architecture,the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of cloud computing, comprises hardware and software designed by a cloud architect who typically works for a cloud integrator. It typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over application programming interfaces, usually web services.

This closely resembles the Unix philosophy of having multiple programs each doing one thing well and working together over universal interfaces. Complexity is controlled and the resulting systems are more manageable than their monolithic counterparts.

Cloud architecture extends to the client, where web browsers and/or software applications access cloud applications.

Cloud storage architecture is loosely coupled, where metadata operations are centralized enabling the data nodes to scale into the hundreds, each independently delivering data to applications or users.

Types

Cloud computing types

Public cloud

Public cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional mainstream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on a fine-grained, self-service basis over the Internet, via web applications/web services, from an off-site third-party provider who shares resources and bills on a fine-grained utility computing basis.

Hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external providers “will be typical for most enterprises”.

Private cloud

Private cloud and internal cloud are neologisms that some vendors have recently used to describe offerings that emulate cloud computing on private networks. These (typically virtualisation automation) products claim to “deliver some benefits of cloud computing without the pitfalls”, capitalising on data security, corporate governance, and reliability concerns. They have been criticized on the basis that users “still have to buy, build, and manage them” and as such do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less hands-on management, essentially “[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept”.

While an analyst predicted in 2008 that private cloud networks would be the future of corporate IT, there is some uncertainty whether they are a reality even within the same firm. Analysts also claim that within five years a “huge percentage” of small and medium enterprises will get most of their computing resources from external cloud computing providers as they “will not have economies of scale to make it worth staying in the IT business” or be able to afford private clouds.. Analysts have reported on Platform’s view that private clouds are a stepping stone to external clouds, particularly for the financial services, and that future datacenters will look like internal clouds.

The term has also been used in the logical rather than physical sense, for example in reference to platform as a service offerings, though such offerings including Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform are not available for on-premises deployment.

Source: wikipedia.org

]]> http://prajizworld.com/?feed=rss2&p=224 0 http://prajizworld.com/?p=216 http://prajizworld.com/?p=216#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:09:40 +0000 Prajith http://prajizworld.com/?p=216 I joined twitter 8-9 months ago, even if I liked its concept, I never felt it would become this much popular here in kerala, probably because people here takes things in a different angle.

What I have to say is how Shashi Tharoor incident made twitter famous among keralites, even among old people.

I was not that active in twitter for the past few months, but I am back in action seeing my dear ones interest in twitting.

So what are you waiting for, follow  me and Shashi Tharoor

http://twitter.com/prajith

http://twitter.com/ShashiTharoor

Happy Twitting..