HTML span tag

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The <span> tag is used to group inline-elements in a document.

The <span> tag provides no visual change by itself.

The <span> tag provides a way to add a hook to a part of a text or a part of a document.

When the text is hooked in a <span> element you can add styles to the content, or manipulate the content with for example JavaScript.

via HTML span tag.

From The SPAN Tag

Use span tags when you don’t want any changes to the layout other than exactly what you specify in the styles of the span. For example, if you use a <div> or <p> most browsers will add space around the element, because they are block elements.

ScaleXtreme: Cloud-Based Server Automation

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ScaleXtreme is a powerful product that allows you to build, deploy, and manage servers across a variety of different public and private cloud providers.

via Overview | ScaleXtreme: Cloud-Based Server Automation.

From: Accel-Backed ScaleXtreme Takes Data Center Management To The Cloud

ScaleXtreme wants to do the same thing to data automation that Salesforce did to CRM. Replace million-dollar deployments that take months with a five minute download that can have a machine being managed from the cloud in five minutes. And instead of an upfront $1,500 licensing fee per machine, plus maintenance and upgrade fees, ScaleXtreme is shooting for something closer to $150 a year per machine. “This is a radically different model,” says Mulchandani, who started out as an enterprise IT sales guy. “You download the agent and you are done—no sales people, no Italian suits flying across the country.”

Facebook Patents Developing: A Lawsuit From Mitel; More Patent Applications From AOL, Others

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The Mitel Networks suit, filed on March 16, 2012, in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleges infringement of two different patents, one for an “automatic web page generator” and another for “pro-active features for telephony.” They date from 1999 and 2007.

And two patent applications filed last week come from Compass Labs and AOL and respectively cover “user interest analysis and systems” and “content publication activity by a user.”

via Facebook Patents Developing: A Lawsuit From Mitel; More Patent Applications From AOL, Others | TechCrunch.

Most every site on the Internet, including this WordPress site, has its web pages generated automatically using a backend database.

Supreme Court saves medical profession from diagnostic patents

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The prospect of allowing patents on what amounts to human thought prompted a broad range of interest groups, including the ACLU, the Cato Institute (disclosure: I contributed to Cato’s brief in the case), and the American Medical Association, to file briefs urging the Supreme Court to invalidate the patent. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court did so in a unanimous vote.

via Supreme Court saves medical profession from diagnostic patents.

The Hidden Risk of a Meltdown in the Cloud

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There are well known problems of course. The most obvious relates to guaranteeing the security of data when it is stored on computers that that a user does not own and that many others can also access. But various solutions have emerged such as encrypting data before it is sent to the cloud. For that reason, the migration to the cloud is proceeding at full speed in many places.

That may be folly. Today, Bryan Ford at Yale University in New Haven says that the full risks of this migration have yet to be properly explored. He points out that complex systems can fail in many unexpected ways and outlines various simple scenarios in which a cloud could come unstuck.

via The Hidden Risk of a Meltdown in the Cloud – Technology Review.

Now Ford imagines the scenario in which both load balancing programs operate with the same refresh period, say once a minute. When these periods coincide, the control loops start sending the load back and forth between the virtual servers in a positive feedback loop.

Low-Orbit Servers? Or A Pirate Prank?

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“We’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air,” wrote “MrSpock” on the Pirate Bay blog. “This way our machines will have to be shot down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. We’re just starting, so we haven’t figured everything out yet. But we can’t limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore.”

via Low-Orbit Servers? Or A Pirate Prank? » Data Center Knowledge.

This is the only true implementation of cloud computing — the servers are literally in the clouds.  Exchanging torrents or magnet links is a relatively low bandwidth operation.  There really could be something to this scheme but I would think doing it with satellites would be better.  Transmitters and servers can use a lot of power.

The Pirate Bay said it was experimenting with using GPS to control servers using Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized Linux computer.

Raspberry Pi servers aren’t going to be able to handle any kind of web load.  They should consider some kind of broadcast system.