When Active Directory And LDAP Aren’t Enough

Ultimately, the chaos is breeding a whole new niche in Identity as a Service (IdaaS) that’s being tightly contested by vendors like Okta and Identropy and others like Centrifiy and Symplified. It’s an exploding market that Gartner says will make up a quarter of all new IAM sales by the end of 2014 and 40 percent by 2015,

via When Active Directory And LDAP Aren’t Enough – Dark Reading.

Not another x as a service acronym.  IAM=Identity and Access Management

OAuth – A great way to cripple your API

Even the original social networking sites behind OAuth decided they really need other options for different use-cases, such as Twitter’s xAuth, or Yahoo offering Direct OAuth, which turns the entire scheme into a more complicated version of HTTP Basic Authentication, with no added benefits. Perhaps the most damaging point against OAuth, is that the original designer behind it decided to remove his name from the specification, and is washing his hands clean of it.

via Insane Coding: OAuth – A great way to cripple your API.

GoPro doesn’t like their Hero 3 compared to Sony’s AS15?

It appears that our friend at San Mateo doesn’t like us comparing their latest product to the Sony AS15. Earlier today we have received a DMCA take down notice from GoPro for mentioning their trademarks “GoPro” and “Hero” without their authorisation. They say “you learn something new everyday”, and this is clearly an eye-opener for us here. It appears that we’ll need their authorisation to review their products.

via GoPro doesn’t like their Hero 3 compared to Sony’s AS15?.

SDN’s Killer App: More Network Control

When I pressed him for a real-life application that could be the result of the simpler networks that SDN promises, he didn’t disappoint. “You know how you have network neutrality now,” he asked. “What if the customer could flip it around and tell the service provider: ‘I’d like to give preference in my home network to Netflix.'”

via Light Reading – SDN’s Killer App: More Network Control.

What if the customer enforced that preference on their firewall?  They wouldn’t necessarily need this feature from their service provider.

Apathy and refunds are more dangerous than Piracy.

People have to WANT to buy your software, people have to WANT to support you. People need to care about your employees and your company’s well being. There is no better way to achieve that than making sure what you put out there is the best you can do and you treat your customers with respect.

via VA==65731089732bGl2ZXMh – Apathy and refunds are more dangerous than Piracy..

This article is in response to the current SimCity fiasco; one of the most revered gaming franchises that had its recent product launch botched.

Copyright Protection That Serves to Destroy

In Europe, sound recordings enter the public domain 50 years after their initial release.  …  , a published U.S. sound recording created in 1890 will not enter the public domain until 177 years after its creation, constituting a term of rights protection 82 years longer than that of all other forms of audio visual works made for hire.”

via Copyright Protection That Serves to Destroy | Sightings by Terry Teachout – WSJ.com.

Apache Mesos: Dynamic Resource Sharing for Clusters

Apache Mesos is a cluster manager that provides efficient resource isolation and sharing across distributed applications, or frameworks. It can run Hadoop, MPI, Hypertable, Spark (a new framework for low-latency interactive and iterative jobs), and other applications. Mesos is open source in the Apache Incubator.

via Apache Mesos: Dynamic Resource Sharing for Clusters.

Mesos is being used to manage clusters at Twitter, AirBnb, Conviva, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco.

Introducing Chronos: A Replacement for Cron

Chronos has a number of advantages over regular cron. It allows you to schedule your jobs using ISO8601 repeating interval notation, which enables more flexibility in job scheduling. Chronos also supports the definition of jobs triggered by the completion of other jobs, and it also supports arbitrarily long dependency chains.

via Introducing Chronos: A Replacement for Cron – Airbnb Engineering.

In a complex processing pipeline every step increases the chance of failure. Until December last year, we were relying on a single instance with cron to kick off our hourly, daily and weekly ETL jobs. Cron is a really great tool but we wanted a system that allowed retries, was lightweight and provided an easy-to-use interface giving analysts quick insights into which jobs failed and which ones succeeded.

Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own

Avaya, for example, is known for suing service companies, accusing them of violating copyright for simply using a password to log in to their phone systems. That’s right: typing in a password is considered “reproducing copyrighted material.”

via Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own | Wired Opinion | Wired.com.

Because manufacturers have copyrighted the service manuals, local mechanics can’t fix modern equipment. And today’s equipment — packed with sensors and electronics — is too complex to repair without them. That’s a problem for farmers, who can’t afford to pay the dealer’s high maintenance fees for fickle equipment.