Hector Ruiz (pictured), then CEO of AMD, was the unidentified source of material information that the busted Galleon ring traded on, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. He’s even higher up the totem pole than Robert Moffat, the head of IBM servers and storage who was arrested and charged on October 16 along with five other co-conspirators in what the government called the biggest case of insider trading involving a hedge fund in history. For days now the press corps has been leaning on their sources trying to prove the hypothesis that Ruiz was the uncharged AMD insider described by the government in its criminal and civil indictments as the executive who’s “been preaching this deal for so long,” meaning AMD’s spin-off of its fabs and frankly there weren’t too many of those – that’s where the hypothesis came from. The Wall Street Journal identified R... (more)

Sun's Schwartz: IBM's Request "Seems a Little Bonky"

You have to hand it to Jonathan Schwartz. He has a way with words. Who else would have described IBM's call-to-arms to Sun, expressed in an open letter released last week and reported here, as "bonky"? It can only be assumed that this is a variant of "bonkers" as in around the bend, balmy, barmy, bats, batty, buggy, cracked, crackers, daft, dotty, fruity, haywire, insane, kookie, kooky, loco, loony, loopy, nuts, nutty, round the bend, wacky, whacky. Commenting on the open letter in the middle of a Sun "Chalk Talk" session with the media in San Francisco, Schwartz compared and contrasted Sun's vision for Java with the Linux community's vision for Linux. The essential difference, as he sees it, is that the Linux community positively celebrates choice and encourages forking, with dozens and dozens of different flavors and distros, while "In the Java world, we had the op... (more)

Integrating AJAX with the JMX Notification Framework

AJAX and JMX are at opposite ends of the Systems Management stack. However, the emerging ubiquity of the AJAX model for rich browser clients has obscured the benefits the model provides in the architectural space for enhancing support patterns within the problem resolution pipeline. This article elaborates on an architectural benefit of AJAX that lets the management state be 'broadcast' to a browser-enabled user base without waiting for a page refresh. This architecture is an extension of a general pattern for logging JMX events and properties to a server-side log file; this variation logs or 'broadcasts' management information to the (AJAX-enabled) user base. Emphasis is placed on the AJAX request/response model and the painting of management data to the page, together with the beautiful JMX notification framework, all neatly integrated in the middle with an instrum... (more)

Who Are the Top 100 i-Technology Heroes?

>>> Here is the original Slashdotted article with the first hundred names <<< What do Vannevar Bush (pictured), Doug Engelbart, Claude E. Shannon, and Konrad Zuse (to name but a few) all have in common? All were missing from the initial round-up I recently published in an attempt to nail down - by consensus - the top 100 contributors of all-time to i-Technology, to the nexus of technologies that first spawned the Internet, and since have helped maintain and expand it. They were not the only absentees. Others nominated included: Jonathan Rotenberg - founder of the Boston Computer Society; Jonathan Ive,  the principal designer of the iMac and iPod; and the winner of the 1999 Turing Award, Fred Brooks. All the above suggestions derive from the Slashdotting of our search for the best possible nominees. Some of the Slashdot posts were mini-essays in their own right, provi... (more)

JSON Serialization with Appcelerator Java Services

The issue of serializing/transforming model objects is not new, heck I’ve been doing this for quite some time: RMI (ejb/corba) XML (jms, soap, etc..) JSON JSON is not the only way to serialize objects for Web 2.0 applications, but it's the most abundant and heavily used throughout the Appclerator framework. Doing this is actually really easy to do with Appcelerator IModelObjects. Our IModelObjects can easily be used along with Hibernate for persistance, but let's leave that for later for now. When you define your Model classes, there are some very simple things to keep in mind:annotate your attributes with @MessageAttr have your class implement IModelObject Here is a simple example: more)

Examining Cloud Computing Mergers & Acquisitions

One topic that keeps reoccurring in my various conversations is the sudden interest in cloud centric M&A; activities thanks in part to the recent IBM / Sun rumors. Being that I continuously find myself in the midst of a lot of the back room, off the record type conversations I thought I'd share some of my recent insights into cloud m&a.; Without going into detail, lately for one reason or another I have become aware that several of the largest names in technology have put together "cloud M&A; teams" focused on buying up both established cloud related companies as well as some of the latest crop of cloud startups. What is clear in these acquisition discussions is the traditional models applied to M&A; don't work in the current economy and is specially true in cloud computing. Along with the financial crisis, we are facing what I can only describe as a technological crisis ... (more)

Where Cloud Computing Takes Us

The next edition of the HP Discover Performance podcast series brings together two top cloud evangelists from the recent HP Discover 2012 Conference to discuss the specific concepts around converged cloud, information clouds, and hybrid services delivery. We’re joined by Paul Muller, the Chief Software Evangelist at HP, and Christian Verstraete, Chief Technologist for Cloud Strategy at HP. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.] Here are some excerpts: Gardner: You’ve separated the notion of hybrid computing and hybrid delivery. Can you help me understand better why they're different, and what HP means by hybrid delivery? Verstraete: Hybrid computing typically is combining private and public clouds. We feel that many of our customers still have a traditional env... (more)

Is Change Coming Again?

It is a topic of fascination for me that the high-tech world just plain will not stand still. The changes in automotive technology over the last century, for example, do not match the changes in high tech over the last decade. In addition to the expected on-upsmanship that market leaders tend to spur each other on with, there is always The Next Big Thing™, often by a hitherto unheard of company. When you stop to think that Google was incorporated 14 years ago at the writing of this blog, and my own employer (F5 Networks) was founded just 18 years ago, but both are seen as leaders, perhaps even “old school”. Even more extreme, Facebook is not yet 10 years old as a corporation, yet many see it as “old”. So I kind of keep half an eye on the more global changes in high-tech to keep a feel for what might be going on, and what it might mean to you and me. The interesting... (more)

Enterprise Mobility, Business Executives and Mobility Vendors

Recent surveys point to the fact that companies are viewing enterprise mobility in an increasingly strategic manner.  They see compelling mobile apps as the front lines of marketing, sales and customer service.  They are providing executives and managers with business intelligence apps on their tablets to improve visibility, situational awareness and decision-making. When strategic enterprise mobility expands to include integration with theInternet of Things entire new business models and competitive arenas will open up.  Can you image a maintenance person entering a plant building and wirelessly surveying all of the equipment located there for repair and maintenance needs?  The machines can wirelessly communicate their own needs using wireless embedded chips connected to sensors.  All of the equipment could be connected to a command and control center on the other si... (more)

Oracle Upgrades Analytics in Oracle Retail Data Model

REDWOOD SHORES, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 08/29/12 -- Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) News Facts Oracle today announced enhancements to Oracle Retail Data Model, a standards-based, enterprise-class data warehouse that helps retailers gain the insight required to improve the customer experience, increase margins and drive profitability. The latest version of the product incorporates several new forecasting features that provide retailers with actionable insight regarding price elasticity, workforce optimization, customer sentiment, customer segmentation. To deliver insight and support for a full range of retailers, Oracle Retail Data Model now offers advanced analytics for a broader spectrum of subject areas. In addition to its existing capabilities for grocery, fashion, hardline and more, the latest release includes functionality to deliver insight into: Quick serve restaurants a... (more)

A Cup of AJAX? Nay, Just Regular Java Please

These days everyone is talking about AJAX. It’s supposed to be a cool way of creating Web applications. The idea is noble: instead of rendering an entire HTML page on each little change on the page, it’s much better to send an asynchronous request that will  get the data for you and refresh only the relevant portion of the screen. Every author writing on AJAX is giving the same (the only? ) example where this technology is being used: Google maps and email. (BTW, I’m a little sick of these examples). Since I’m not going to be helping Google in improving their maps, I’d like to see some real-world examples implementing  this technology.  Ajax proponents will immediately come with this exciting example of how great it is to refresh some  screen info as the user enters character in a text field. And here's  a sample conversation that might have happened between an imag... (more)