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BLOG: Why open source will rule the data centre

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Michael Bushong | Feb. 6, 2014

According to Michael Bushong of networking startup Plexxi, three commonly occurring conditions ensure that open source software will steadily widen its data centre footprint.

Rare is the infrastructure that lacks open source software, but as we watch such new technologies as SDN move into our data centers, open source seems increasingly likely to penetrate every corner not just servers and applications, but networking, storage, and more.

Michael Bushong, vice president of marketing at SDN vendor Plexxi, sees the dominance of open source as inevitable. In this week's New Tech Forum, he walks us through his reasoning that open source will spread throughout IT. Paul Venezia

Open source as the future of IT Open is playing an increasingly vital role in IT infrastructure. The current, dominant position of open source in server-side computing is well understood, and networking is now edging its way toward open source with the OpenDaylight movement. But is open source a natural evolutionary path for all IT disciplines, or do certain characteristics make some areas more attractive for open source than others?

When we think about networking as an industry, for example, we tend to compare its progress to the evolutionary track taken by the compute world. The assumption is that the networking industry will unfold in much the same way that the server industry did, marching past similar milestones. But this view of the world assumes that evolution follows a two-dimensional track, and industries are either parked somewhere along the continuum or they're moving toward a predetermined end.

But what if evolution doesn't follow some set schedule or even a singular path?If we assume that technological evolution is not predetermined, then what conditions drive an industry toward open source?

To address these questions, let's start by examining the three major drivers for broad open source adoption:

Single platform When lots of applications run on a single platform, that platform is primed for open source. For most platform plays, value and differentiation are not in the platform, but rather reside in what runs on top of the platform. It makes sense that, to the extent possible, vendors developing on a platform should leverage a common body of work. Re-creating foundational elements not unique is duplicative work that ultimately costs the end-user. Additionally, a common platform helps ensure that all applications on top of the platform can run in what ends up looking like a fairly ubiquitous execution environment. This is largely what drove the migration of compute toward Linux.

Contrary to popular belief, a platform that's open source and ubiquitous can also be lucrative. Companies like Red Hat have been successful at leveraging a broad installed base to generate solid revenue streams. That uniformity of the platform Red Hat supports helps ensure that its customer base is as large as possible. Even small deviations in the underlying platform would fracture Red Hat's customer base into smaller sets.

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BLOG: Why open source will rule the data centre

The open source countdown has begun

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'By freeing themselves from the shackles of proprietary IT systems, companies can gain a further competitive edge'

On Wednesday, Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, outlined his plans to start shifting away from using proprietary Microsoft productivity applications in order to adopt more open source technologies.

A move that could potentially save the public sector millions of pounds annually, it would also see him, and government, break away from what he refers to as the vendor oligopoly currently dominating IT.

Since 2010, over 200 million has been spent by the government on Microsoft Office alone. This is a startling figure when one considers that there are open source software packages capable of delivering almost exactly the same functionality for little to no cost.

In a time of austerity, when we have all been asked to shoulder some of the burden, it then almost seems absurd that the government would incur such an expense when a viable alternative would be available for practically zero cost.

The arguments for Microsoft Office and against the open source alternatives, LibreOffice and OpenOffice, are well versed. Microsoft Office is, after all, a very slick piece of software, with a huge range of features.

But, the truth of the matter is that only a very small fraction of users utilise more than the most basic of these features. The advanced features are the reserve of a handful of power users, who need them for a very specific set of applications many of which are now also offered by the open source packages.

In the past, it has been argued that LibreOffice and OpenOffice are buggy and that they did not offer a comparable user experience to its Microsoft Office competitor. Today, that is not the case. The open source options available in the market today can meet user needs just as well as proprietary software if not better.

>See also:Open-source cancer diagnosis

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The open source countdown has begun

Julian Assange – Times Topics – The New York Times

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Oct. 6, 2013

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, already a documentary subject, is now the focus of Bill Condon feature film The Fifth Estate; Assange burst into public consciousness in 2010 with WikiLeaks' release of Apache helicopter attack video, revealing millions of secrets and unlocking rarefied kind of fame.MORE

Op-Ed article by Australian journalist Julia Baird describes how WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's bid for a seat in the Australian Senate was undone by accusations that he acted like other politicians.MORE

Swedish police open investigation after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urges them to find out what happened to suitcase he thinks was stolen from him by intelligence agents as he traveled from Sweden to Germany in 2010.MORE

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange formally inaugurates a new political party and declares his own unorthodox candidacy for a seat in the Australian Senate in national elections to be held later this year; says he has every confidence in his ability to run a campaign from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has been living under asylum for more than a year to avoid being extradited to Sweden.MORE

WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, seemingly forgotten until their public support for Edward J Snowden, have in fact been under investigation by at least four United States agencies since 2010 leaks of American classified documents; wide-ranging investigations involve tens of thousands of pages of evidence and grand jury subpoenas for at least four former members of organization.MORE

WikiLeaks again seizes global spotlight by assisting Edward J Snowden in his daring flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, mounting bold defense of culture of national security disclosures; group has provided legal and logistical support to Snowden, sending British activist Sarah Harrison to accompany him on flight; founder Julian Assange has met with Ecuadorean representatives to support request for asylum.MORE

Officials from Ecuador and Great Britain are scheduled to meet to discuss case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up for nearly a year in Ecuadorean Embassy, foiling British attempts to extradite him to Sweden to face charges of sexual misconduct.MORE

Ecuador's foreign minister accuses British government of trampling on the human rights of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by refusing to allow him to travel to Ecuador, which granted him political asylum in 2012.MORE

Alex Gibney's upcoming documentary We Steal Secrets, about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, is first of several Hollywood films about the little-known people who grew larger than the most powerful of governments by using the Internet to broadcast their secrets.MORE

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Julian Assange News and Video – FOX News Topics – FOXNews.com

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WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Loses Extradition Appeal

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden to answer sex crime allegations after judges rejected claims that moves to return him to Scandinavia were unfair and unlawful.Judges John Thomas and Duncan Ousely said Assange should be sent to be questioned over the alleged rape of one woman and the molestation of another in Stockholm last year.The 40-year-old has denied wrongdoing, and insists the case is politically motivated by those opposed to the work of his secret-spilling organization.Wearing a gray suit, Assange flipped through piles of documents and shook hands with supporters as he appeared in court to hear the verdict.It was not immediately clear whether Assange, who has spent much of the past year under virtual house arrest at a supporter's country estate, will now have the right to take his case to Britain's Supreme Court.In their ruling, the appeal judges said the decision by Swedish authorities to issue a European Arrest Warrant ...

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What’s It Like to Play Kirk Pengilly From INXS?

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What's It Like to Play Kirk Pengilly From INXS?

After portraying Julian Assange and Kirk Pengilly, it appears as though Alex Williams has found his niche. 80s and live people, he said with a laugh when he chatted to POPSUGAR Australia on the red carpet at the AACTA Awards in Sydney. The Australian actor, who raised his profile when he played a young Julian Assange in Network Tens telemovie Underground in 2012, is making his TV return this Sunday night in the miniseries Channel Seven has dubbed the TV event of the year, INXS: Never Tear Us Apart. Williams is the iconic Australian bands guitarist, saxophonist and back-up singer Kirk Pengilly, starring opposite a talented young cast including Luke Arnold as Michael Hutchence, Hugh Sheridan as Garry Gary Beers, Damon Herriman as the bands manager CM Murphy, and former The X Factor winner Samantha Jade as Kylie Minogue.

INXS: Never Tear Us Apart looks at the bands rise, from playing grubby pubs in Western Australia to scoring tour after tour in America and going on to become one of the worlds biggest bands in the 1980s and 1990s. They were rock stars and quickly transitioned into rock star lifestyles; when they werent onstage performing to huge crowds they had no shortage of naked women and drugs in hotel rooms. The miniseries also focuses on Hutchences personal life, including his high-profile romances with Minogue, Danish supermodel Helena Christensen, and Paula Yates, and his tragic death in 1997. The production benefitted from the experiences of Murphy and band member Tim Farriss, who serve as co-executive producers and gave the miniseries full access to the bands archive of music, photography and stories.

Despite being only 23, Williams said he was familiar with the bands music: Thanks to my dad, I grew up listening to INXS, without actually knowing I was listening to INXS. I grew up listening to a lot of the rock that came out of the 80s and 90s. And INXS were huge, and sort of ahead of the game they brought styles and people followed.

Williams described the filming experience as great! We had six young guys and this massive story, about these guys who basically go to the end of the world with their music. It was fantastic. It was a lot of fun trying to rein us all in they were worried with a cast of six guys, it could go anywhere, but within 15 minutes of sitting down at dinner we all knew it was going to be a lot of fun. The shoot, in mid-2013, took nine weeks altogether but started off with the guys Nicholas Masters, Ido Drent and Andy Ryan rounded out the main six as Farriss brothers Tim, Jon and Andrew respectively spending time in a warehouse with a full kit, just pumping out songs, trying to get our acts together, the music together. Basically finding their groove the way that any band would.

To prep for the role, Williams had to master guitar and saxophone to convincingly play Kirk Pengilly. Guitar wasnt too hard as he already plays a bit, but saxophone proved to be harder for someone whos never played a wind instrument. As for his look, Williams was aided by Pengilly, who sent over some of his old clothes from the era the miniseries is set in. The two have met each other a few times We played some pool with him but Williams is still absolutely intimidated at the thought of Pengilly watching INXS: Never Tear Us Apart. Thats the thing: its courageous of them to let us do it, and to give over the catalogue and rights. Theyre still a big force in music. But I think they wanted to show people what it was like from the start. Its a great story.

INXS: Never Tear Us Apart airs Sunday night at 8:30 p.m. on Channel Seven.

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Dogecoin Kiss: An original song about the world’s friendliest Cryptocurrency – Video

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Dogecoin Kiss: An original song about the world #39;s friendliest Cryptocurrency
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Chelsea Manning and the Law – Outside The Beltway

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Bradley Mannings announcement that she wishes to be addressed as Chelsea Manning and begin living life as a woman poses some interesting legal questions.

Tom Vanden Brook and Jim Michaels, reporting for USA Today (Manning Faces Legal Minefield) provide some background:

Legal, medical and mental health professionals, even the Veterans Affairs Department, recognize that transgender men and women can qualify for medical treatment. The VA wont pay for veterans to have sexual reassignment surgery but it will pay for hormone treatment and counseling for those who qualify.

Its unknown how many transgender troops are serving. From 2001 to 2011, there were 3,177 veterans diagnosed with gender identity disorder, according to the VA. The number is increasing annually, it says. About one in 11,000 male babies and one in 30,000 female babies are born with gender identity disorder, according to the Veterans Health Administration.

The Pentagon, meantime, refuses to accept transgender troops or offer them treatment. Gay and lesbian troops may now serve openly, but transgender soldiers get discharged. And the Army says it will not treat Manning for transgender issues during the privates sentence at the Armys Fort Leavenworth prison a male-only facility.

Activists and lawyers say the Pentagon is fighting a rear-guard action that it cant win. It cant deny a prisoner legitimate, recognized therapy, they say. If Manning receives a diagnosis that he needs gender treatment, hell be entitled to therapy in prison, says Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Its really clear-cut, Keisling said. If a person gets diabetes, you treat the diabetes, she said. If you break a leg, that gets treated. If you have schizophrenia, that gets treated. It doesnt matter if it is a mental or physical health problem.

Denying therapy or surgery is the initial reaction most prisons have had. Its regularly been rejected by courts because the courts say the Constitution requires prisoners be given adequate care, said Neal Minahan, a Boston attorney who has worked on similar cases.

You cant just have a blanket ban on a medical procedure without some doctor involvement, he said.

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Chelsea Manning and the Law - Outside The Beltway

What not to say to a transgender person

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Transgender identity has been making headlines recently, from Pvt. Chelsea Manning to Katie Couric's gaffe. CNN anchor Piers Morgan has now generated controversy with his questions during a chat with author and trans activist Janet Mock. Mock will return to Piers Morgan Live tonight at 9 pm ET on CNN. This piece was originally published January 15, and has been updated.

(CNN) -- Transgender women, it seems, are all the rage.

Or more accurately, a great deal of transgender women seem to be popping up in mainstream media, their lives (and their lives as they lived them in the past) offered up for both audiences and journalists to pick through and scrutinizeand yes, sometimes marvel over.

In some cases, there has been a gratuitous outing, like in Grantland's story about the inventor of a "Magical Putter".

In others, there have been some ruffled feathers, as the mainstream world bumps up against the fact that transgender people are not only among us, but their lives are not so neatly summed up as having been "born into wrong bodies."

Transgender celebrities

Transgender celebrities

Transgender celebrities

Transgender celebrities

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