Misc

The Jaguar Can't Quite Catch The Roadrunner

Joe Pruitt — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:11:18 GMT

It's fairly common knowledge that the Coyote has had trouble catching the Road Runner. Good old Wile E. has tried since 1948 and has yet to capture his elusive pray but unfortunately for the Road Runner, there's a new predator close on his tail.

For those who don't know, Top500.org is a project that was established in 1993 to assemble and maintain a list of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world. They have been compiling a list twice a year since their inception with the help of high-performance computer experts, computational scientists, manufacturers, and the Internet community in general.

Since November 2005, the Jaguar, housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been in the top ten and has since slowly been shooting for the top position. But, by the June 2008 report, a new kid has hit the top of the charts and aims to hold onto that spot and not let anyone else catch him, especially the Jaguar.

The new kid on the block, is The RoadRunner. Straight out of the cartoons, this behemoth beast is a marvel of computing power. It was built by IBM and in June was the first system ever to break the peatflop/s Linpack barrier. Since then, it has been slightly enlarged and has reached a peak 1.105 petaflop/s. It is based on the IBM QS22 blades which are built with advanced versions of the processor that is in the Sony PlayStation 3. All of the nodes are connected together with a commodity infiniBand network.

The Jaguar is a XT5 system manufactured by Cray and is close behind RoadRunner at 1.059 petaflop/s and is expected to pass the RoadRunner in the near future.

We'll see if the Jaguar can do what Wile E. Coyote could not and get him some RoadRunner for lunch. I'm not counting on it though...

-Joe

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The Presidents of the United States Play Kitty

Joe Pruitt — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:53:52 GMT

Here's the forth clip from our little band's opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference.

It's Meow Meow time with a "Little bag of bones been out all night" and while "Kitty at my foot and I wanna touch it" but you can't, how about "watching" it instead. Here's Kitty!

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The Presidents of the United States Play Lump

Joe Pruitt — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:16:49 GMT

Here's the third clip from our little band's opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference. For all you Wierd Al fans out there, you may say to yourself that this song sounds a lot like "Gump". We'll it does, because this is the song that is the source for that parody.

So, don't "sit alone in a boggy marsh" and definitely don't let "mud flow up into your pajamas". Just sit back and watch PUSA playing Lump!

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The Presidents of the United States Play Peaches

Joe Pruitt — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:40:11 GMT

As I mentioned yesterday, our little band had the pleasure of opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference. Here is part 2 with a few more to come of the Presidents of the United States playing on of my favorites.

So, let's "take a little naps where the roots all twist, squished a rotten peach in my fist and dreamed about you, woman..." Here's some good and yummy Peaches for your viewing pleasure.

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The Presidents Of The United States Play Back Porch

Joe Pruitt — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:42:25 GMT

Our little band had the pleasure of opening for one heck of a great group at our recent sales conference. Luckily I had my camcorder along for part of their set. The audio is a little distorted but seeing how I was a body length away from their amps, there wasn't much I could do about it.

So, without further ado, get "happy with no teeth", be "happy here in hibernation", get "slurpin' on a peach", and start "staring' at the situation" - on the Back Porch!

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ClickJacking Your Way Into Office

Joe Pruitt — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:58:40 GMT

I recently blogged about a new type of browser vulnerability called ClickJacking aimed at tricking you into clicking on something you weren't aware you were clicking on. The idea is that the bad guy hides a button by making it invisible and then "moves" it under you mouse right before you click thus causing you to either submit information, download something harmful, or start a process on your computer such as a webcam. Luckily there is a FireFox plugin to help protect you from those bad guys.

But what happens when the bad guys move away from the browser and into the polling booths? As far as I know this hasn't happened yet but according to a team from Rice University, ClickJacking your way into office is entirely possible.

The team of hackers from Rice University conducted a exercise to test the security of touch screen voting machines. They created an invisible touch-screen button that ensured that one contender would receive 90 percent of the vote.

As reported on MSNBC.com, Dan Wallach, an associate professor of computer science and director of Rice's Computer Security Lab, said his class's exercise reconfirmed his believe that anyone with a little know-how and the right access could easily do considerable damage. Despite the classroom setting, students said the vote tampering was eye-opening not only because of how straightforward it was to cause damage, but also because of how easy it was to get away with it — despite the scrutiny of other classmates primed to look for mischief.

At least my vote will be safe. That is, unless they find a way to ClickJack my absentee ballot.

-Joe

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Social Media ABC's - X is for XMLHttpRequest

Joe Pruitt — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:21:30 GMT

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few). Today's letter is "X". There aren't many "X" words in relation to Social Media so I opted for a word that is part of the underlying plumbing needed to make blogs and other web 2.0 social applications usable. Today I picked the infamous XMLHttpRequest.

"X" is for XMLHttpRequest

XMLHttpRequest

Pronounced: Eks-em-el Eych-tee-tee-pee Ri-kwest

XMLHttpRequest, or XHR, is a XML DOM API that can be used by JavaScript and other web browser scripting languages to transfer XML and other data between a web server and a browser.

XMLHttpRequest is an important part of Ajax development and is used to implement responsive and dynamic web applications.

The XMLHttpRequest concept was originally designed by Microsoft as a server-side API call for Outlook Web Access 2000 and was subsequently implemented in many major web browsers.

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Google Chrome Will Make You Smarter

Joe Pruitt — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:15:50 GMT

A while back I posted about Google's new browser Chrome. I talked about the new features included and how I believe it will be a force to be reckoned with in the pending browser wars. What I didn't mention was that by using it, you will actually become smarter!

As reported on TechTree.com, According to results soon to be published by the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, Internet searches can actually help strengthen the aging brain thanks to greater mental "activity" that it undergoes while waiting for the search results and the following "scan".

Recent research utilizing MRI equipment to monitor the cranial activity of two sets of people showed that for Internet "novices" (those who go online less than once daily), the areas of the brain which were engaged while they were reading remained more or less the same while "regulars" (those who went online at least once daily) had far more areas of the brain that were engaged when they tried Internet searches.

The Washington Post also reported on the research at the University of California Los Angeles studied 24 "novice" and "regular" internet users between the ages of 55 and 76 and found that "by searching the Internet, you may train the brain and it may keep it active and healthy."

So there you go: Use Google Chrome regularly and become smarter!

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Social Media ABC's - W is for Walled Garden

Joe Pruitt — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:50:02 GMT

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few). Today's letter is "W". The "W" words Web 2.0, Widget, and Wiki stand out but I'm going to go for something a bit more serene - the Walled Garden.

"W" is for Walled Garden

Walled Garden

Pronounced: Wawld Gahr-dn

With regards to the internet, a Walled Garden refers to a browsing environment that controls the locations the user is able to access.

Wikipedia defines it as:

A walled garden, with regards to media content, refers to a closed set or exclusive set of information services provided for users (a method of creating a monopoly or securing an information system). This is in contrast to providing consumers access to the open Internet for content and e-commerce. The term is often used to describe offerings from interactive television providers or mobile phone operators which provide custom content, and not common carrier functions. Another use of the term refers to quarantining malware-infected computers which exhibit symptoms of botnet activity in a way that the user can still access tools to disinfect the machine, usually with a Web browser. Yet another example is where an unauthenticated user is given access to a limited environment for the purpose of setting up an account - after they have done so they are allowed out of the walled garden. Some walled gardens are created and maintained by the use of firmware upgrades that wall-out alternatives (eg. Apple iPhone hacks).

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Social Media ABC's - V is for Viral

Joe Pruitt — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:40:10 GMT

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few). Today's letter is "V". "V" brings us vlogs, VIOP, and video but I'm going with something a bit more clinical. Today's word is Viral.

"V" is for Viral

Viral

Pronounced: Vahy-ruhl

For something to be viral, means that it is able to replicate itself or convert other objects to copy itself when those objects are exposed to it.

In the context of Social Media, examples of things that can be viral are marketing, advertising, and video. As defined in Wikipedia:

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

They say that the average consumer tells three people about a product they like and eleven people about a product they did not like. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior by targeting folks with a high social network reach and creating viral messages that appeal to that user base causing a high probability of being passed along.

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