The Google GoBot

The Google GoBot is a little walking piece of hardware with an
unprecedented level of intelligence. Fifty-thousand beta versions have
been produced in the year 2032, set loose on earth to crawl our cities. A
GoBot has just one mission in its electronic mind: uncover fresh
information wherever it may hide, whenever it may show. Details will be
reported back to the Google headquarters in real-time.
     Google GoBots were designed to uncover secrets,
and they were bound to legal laws, too. Spying on dark alleys with their
night vision lenses they helped report several crimes. One rather
important Las Vegas led drug syndicate had to give up its nationwide
activities “due to those pestering Googlebots alerting the police.”
      Google GoBots had their own idea of human
privacy. They started lurking in people’s backyards and gardens, peeking
through windows into bathrooms, questioning neighbors, and even
handing out Google Candy to kids to make them reveal important
information on their parents.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is an operating system built by a worldwide team of expert developers. It contains all the applications you need: a web browser, office suite, media apps, instant messaging and much more.
Ubuntu is an open-source alternative to Windows and Office.

The Ubuntu promise

• Ubuntu will always be free of charge, along with its regular enterprise releases and security updates
• Ubuntu comes with full commercial support from Canonical and hundreds of companies from across the world
• Ubuntu provides the best translations and accessibility features that the free software community has to offer
• Ubuntu core applications are all free and open source. We want you to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud

Private clouds offer immediacy and elasticity in your own IT infrastructure. Using Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, you can experience the benefits of cloud computing behind your firewall. Deploy workloads and have them running immediately. Grow or shrink computing capacity to meet the needs of your application.

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) is included with Ubuntu Server Edition and integrates a number of open source projects (including Eucalyptus).

Ubuntu on Amazon EC2

Amazon's Elastic Computing (EC2) cloud allows you to build on-demand virtual systems with minimal in-house hardware requirements. Amazon EC2 fits perfectly with Ubuntu Server Edition's modularity, virtualization capabilities, range of applications and optimised performance.

Amazon's Elastic Computing (EC2) cloud with Ubuntu Server Edition enables businesses to build flexible, on-demand virtual systems on almost any scale.

IBM Industry Models

What’s New in IBM

Industry  Models Version 8.1

IBM Industry Models version 8.1 feature enhanced industry content and tooling for the banking, insurance, and health plans models. These models accelerate business requirements, deployment and user acceptance of performance management solutions based on IBM Industry Models, IBM InfoSphere Information Server, InfoSphere Warehouse and IBM Cognos 8 BI.
Specifically, this new version contains:

• New banking process model content for trade finance, payments and corporate actions.
• New Rational Data Architect (RDA) native business glossary and logical models for Banking, Insurance, Health Plan and Financial Markets for tighter and streamlined InfoSphere Information Server, InfoSphere Business Glossary and Cognos 8 BI integration.
• Enhanced Enterprise Model Extender (EME) for RDA capabilities for multi-user and source control management integration, plus, scope management extensions to accelerate and simplify lifecycle management.

---

The release enables new and existing clients, who have invested in the IBM Industry Data Models, to take greater advantage of the InfoSphere and Cognos portfolio to accelerate their industry specific, performance management solutions.
Here are some of the new capabilities in more detail:
Enhanced Content: banking process model content including:

• Trade Finance: Addition of Trade Finance content to Process and Service models that allows financial institutions to re-engineer and streamline their trade finance offerings from both a Business and IT perspective.
• Payments: IBM has extended the Payments Services models to support Payment Initiation (PAIN) messages in addition to the existing Payment, Clearing, and Settlement (PACS) messages. Each of these components are key aspects of the Single Euro Payments Area initiative.
• Corporate Actions: IBM has extended the Corporate Actions subject area by adding the Services models to the existing Process Models which were delivered in version 8.0.

Enhance Tooling: Tighter integration with InfoSphere Information Server with the Banking (BDW), Insurance (IIW), Health Plan Data Model (HPDM) and Financial Markets (FMDW) Data Models:

• IBM will deliver and support the Statement of Record, Summary, and Analysis models in native Rational Data Architect (RDA) logical data format.
• IBM has created RDA business glossary models based on the conceptual and requirements models from each of these industries, thus enabling the content to be delivered and integrated with InfoSphere Information Server (using InfoSphere Metadata Server) using the native meta-brokers available to RDA users. The glossary models will be linked to the logical data models enabling tighter linkage between business concepts and definitions and the downstream physical implementation.
• IBM has migrated version 8.0 of the Health Plan Data Models to the Enterprise Model Extender environment from MMM. With this migration, customers can now take advantage of a more robust and functional modeling environment, resulting in higher quality models and integration capabilities.
• Native Rational Data Architect (RDA) data models for Banking, Insurance, Financial Markets and Health Plan deliver simplified usage by InfoSphere Information Server (especially InfoSphere Business Glossary, InfoSphere Information Analyzer, InfoSphere FastTrack and IBM Cognos 8 BI)
• Enhanced data model tooling and additional support for IBM Health Plan Data Model. Native RDA format models: Data Models – Logical Data Models – System of Record, Summary and Analysis; Conceptual and Requirements. New Multi-user, source code control (SCCS) options and reporting capabilities.
• IBM Enterprise Model Extender for Rational Data Architect (new Base Tooling). Multi-user and source control management integration. Scope management extension.

 

The Power of the Green Screen

I recently saw James Cameron's new movie, Avatar.  It is a tour de force of computer animation and special effects.  Unlike many sci-fi and action films, this one actually had a decent (if predictable) story.  Movies like this really blur the lines between special effects and reality.

In quite a different way, the use of so-called Green Screen. (or more correctly, Chroma Keying) technology is doing much the same thing for movies set in actual locations.  It is getting so that you can hardly tell what has been shot in the studio and what is real.