Italy wants to jail Google executives

The case of hazing young men with dawn syndrome in Italy made it to the court.

Italian court thinks that it's Google's responsibility that they haven't removed the video showing such a horrible thing. Making company (or service provider) responsible for user-created content which can be added without human assistance seems quite weird to me.

I am asking - if I buy a paper and draw a swastika on it, can I sue a person who sold me the paper?

http://www.reuters.com/article/COMSRV/idUSGEE5AO17F20091125

iPhone worm

It didn't take long and we have a first worm for iPod here.

It spreads on unlocked and jailbroken devices whose users haven't changed default SSH password. Apple claims that jailbreaking iPhones is illegal but there is no reason why it would be so.

Fortunately, this worm is harmless.

http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2009/11/iphone-worm.html

Windows in China

Microsoft was recently ordered by Chinese government to stop selling some versions of Windows operating system. The reason seams to be unlicensed use of some fonts which were developed by local company.

It is very strange how Chinese officials protect their companies while illegal copies of virtually everything made in China floods the world.

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE5AH0M020091118

YouTube announces 1080p Full-HD video

As resolution of camera increases, YouTube reacts with featuring FullHD videos.

So basically you take 1080p video, upload it to YouTube and can watch it in the same quality.
If you have uploaded your 1080p video before YouTube supported this feature, they will reprocess your original file and you will be able to view it in full HD with no work at all!

Amazing!

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/11/1080p-hd-comes-to-youtube.html

BSA nazi tactics

We have had a long experience with dictatorship in the country where I come from.
At first the nazis came in '38. Then communist in '48.

And now BSA. Self-proclaimed savior of rights. They basically threaten everyone even though they don't even officially exist anymore.

This case (which was their end) illustrates my points.

http://www.digisys.cz/bsa_dog.htm

New York to use XBox

Authorities in New York decided to use XBox Live, an internet service designed to download music, video and play online games, to warn XBox users of any possible terrorist threats.

I think this is especially useful for college students and kids who just plays XBox and don't watch news or listen to the radio.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/state-local/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221900336&queryText=new%20york%20xbox

Millennium disc

One of the greatest drawbacks of optical media technology is the durability of stored data.
Some sources estimates that average lifespan of CD or DVD is less then 10 years.

A new invention is trying to tackle this issue offering optical disc which is said to last for 1 thousand years.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/07/17/millenniata.disc.archiving/

4TB drives

Increasing amount of data stored every day calls for high capacity storage devices.
Although flash-based solid state memory drives are getting more and more attention, good old HDD is still the best and cheapest way to store your data.

Especially with the new generations of hard drives which will store 3 and later on even 4 TB of data.
That's more than 500hrs of full-hd video!

WD 4TB drive (consist of 2x2TB drives)
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134153/Western_Digital_releases_monster_4TB_hard_drive

In-car computing

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/09/ces.cars.computers/index.html

As computers get smaller and faster and algorithms and programming techniques more sophisticated, some things that seemed to be unbelievable are becoming a reality.

Just image a car that warns of a pedestrian you haven't seen or a even a car that drives itself! Sit back and relax, let the technology take the control.

The final frontier

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/21/space.camera.icarus.ireport/index.html

The most interesting thing in this article is how the spread of technology allowed ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Imagine just a couple of years ago, in precellphone and predigitalcamera times, how challenging would it be to launch a device almost to the space and retrieve a picture from it.

Nowadays, it's just a matter of determinantion and 148 bucks.

Microsoft fights "malvertising"

http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2009/09/17/bad-ad-going-after-the-malvertising-threat.aspx

Have you ever opened a webpage only to see flashing banners all over the place offering you a free virus scan? Or that the virus has allready been found and you have to buy a certain software to get rid of it? Many users who are not familiar enough with the internet are possible victims of these dirty tricks.

This kind of advertising is called malvertising (compare to malware) and can be potentially dangerous and causes economical losses not just to users but also to Microsoft as well. Therefore Microsoft decided to step in and put end to this malvertising.

IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi

http://www.thestandard.com/predictions/suggestions/802-11n-becomes-final-standard-january-2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11n

It looks like that after IEEE said yes to the draft that has been here for the last three years, we will finally have an 802.11n final specification. For most users it basically means up to 12x faster networking speed. The new wifi standard is even faster than FastEthernet, todays most widespread LAN standard.

Google Chrome

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138331/Chrome_buries_Windows_rivals_in_browser_drag_race

This article compares speed of different browsers and shows that not all of them are equal. When the speed is the factor, one would like to use Chrome - it is faster and offers bigger viewing space for webpages. I personally use Chrome on my tiny netbook where every inch counts.

However, stable version of Chrome for MacOS and Linux hasn't been released yet. These users will just have to wait :)

My jobs

Business specialization	Job title
1)      IT	System analyst, programmer, manager
2)      Project management	Project manager
3)      IT	IT services research and engineering
Classes offered by my school	IT skills I need to acquire
CMST classes	communication skills
CSC classes	programming, computational theory
MGT classes	human management skills
MGT, HRE classes	leadership skills
Locations I would consider	Companies I would consider
USA, Europe	IBM – services research and engineering
Europe	Small companies where my work can have higher impact on the whole business

Job title	Location	Salary
Senior software engineer	Santa Monica, CA	$100,000 - $140,000
Principle Java engineer	Torrance, CA	100k-130k
IT manager	Woodland hills, CA	60k-75k
IBM SDC	Brno, Czech Republic, Europe	unknown
… Countless other offers, found 2669 positions just in CA

Creating the cumulus

From The Economist print edition, Oct 23rd 2008
Online version

"Software will be transformed into a combination of services"
This article focuse on IT services and explain in a way what an IT service is and how it can be imagined. It also shows a new software paradigm, expanding the idea about subroutines into the idea of services which can be viewed as these subroutines but also offered on the remote basis across the web. Article has revealed the need for better broadband connectivity as a prerequisite for services to be broadly accepted.

The concept of SOA (Service oriented architecture) is also presented and it is correctly stated that despite millions of dollars spent on advertising and promoting SOA, it really hasn't taken off yet. Another parts of the article are focused on web-based applications and web services and a question, whether these applications can ever replace desktop clients (laptots, netbooks, etc.) fully, or not. I agree with the point made in the article that instead of replacement, web services and web hosted applications will contribute to the software and won't really replace it. At least not in the next decade according to my opinion.

Highs and lows

From The Economist print edition, Oct 23rd 2008
Online version

The article focuses on the emerging market of "cloud computing" and 3 main sides of this business - providers, who develop and market services, customers consuming services and suppliers, providing hardware infrastructure for service providers.

It is unclear whether providers or suppliers will have better position to make a higher profit but in the long run the suppliers tends to be winners.

I think that the main contribution of this article is the point of view it presents. One can be familiar with the problematic of cloud computing and service providing, yet it is always beneficial to be reminded about the basics, i.e. what sides there are and how the recent development was.

Also some graphics from this article clearly illustrate the major shift in economics paradigm that is being experienced all over the developed countries.

Introduction

Who am I? My name is Tomas Rehak, a graduate student of SSME (Service science, management and engineering) at  Masaryk University, Faculty of Informatics, Czech Republic.
I am interested in services generally, but since I've obtained my bachelor degree at applied informatics, my primary concern should be IT services.
Currently I am an exchange student at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA. My exchange major is business because I feel that I need to work more on this part of SSME (and on my English as well).
In this blog I am going to present papers on SSME which I find interesting and accompany them with my comments and insights. Later on I hope to present some parts of my diploma thesis I am working on.
I would appreciate any comments on my posts as well as any ideas on what should I focus, recommendations on interesting papers and articles, any kind of feedback at all.
Have fun :)