Thisdogofmine

An Illinois judge on Friday granted a temporary restraining order barring the enforcement of a new Illinois gun control law against roughly 800 plaintiffs.

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What started out as an idea on a whim, turned into friendship across the Atlantic Ocean.

This is a liveblog for the Day 1 general session at VMworld 2015 in San Francisco. For many people, VMworld started yesterday with the Welcome Reception in the Solutions Exchange, but today marks the official kick-off to the event. I’ll have to end this liveblog shortly before the general session ends in order to make it to some customer meetings.

The keynote kicks off with a short video about the VMware Cloud Academy, where both “legacy” and “cloud-native” apps can enjoy the Unified Hybrid Cloud. Following that video, Carl Eschenbach takes the stage (along with some “apps”). Eschenbach sets the stage for the session by talking about the momentum and volume of success that VMware has enjoyed (and continues to enjoy). He also calls out VMware’s philanthropic efforts, via the VMware Foundation and the #vGiveBack program.

Eschenbach nexts dives a bit deeper on the theme of the show, “Ready for Any.” This means VMware technologies and products supporting any application, any cloud, any infrastructure, any time, any place…you get the idea. This theme encompasses SDDC (software-defined data center) initiatives, mobility initiatives, and EUC (end-user computing) initiatives. Eschenbach talks in a a bit more detail about how Unified Hybrid Cloud includes private cloud, managed cloud, or public cloud, and built using a variety of methodologies (build your own, converged infrastructure, or hyperconverged infrastructure). This leads into a short video before Eschenbach brings Mike Benson from DirecTV to the stage.

Benson shares, at a very high level, how DirecTV has been using (and will be using) some of VMware’s products and technologies to handle extreme volume spikes (such as that driven by boxing matches, NFL games, etc.). Benson especially called out the use of VMware NSX to help provide greater automation for networking services and for increased security. DirecTV’s key initiatives moving forward are cloud, mobility, and big data.

With that, Benson leaves the stage, and Eschenbach provides a “roadmap,” if you will, of how the keynotes will proceed over the rest of today and tomorrow. Eschenbach leaves the stage without introducing anyone else, and the session moves into a video talking about how various customers are leveraging hybrid cloud solutions from VMware in a variety of industries and to solve a variety of use cases.

After the video, Bill Fathers takes the stage to talk about public cloud and hybrid cloud. Fathers asks the question, “What is hybrid? Is it as simple as connecting a SaaS application into my existing environment?” Fathers states that it’s more than that, and that VMware’s vision of the unified hybrid cloud is the right approach to bring together private cloud, managed cloud, and public cloud. Fathers structures his talk around three use cases: disaster recovery, application scaling, and mobile applications.

Disaster recovery is the use case that Fathers starts discussing first, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time on that (“you guys have it nailed,” he says). Instead, Fathers moves directly to application scaling, and talks about how latency kills an application. Networking, according to Fathers, is the bottleneck. Mobile applications are the next huge challenge. What makes mobile applications challenging? The back-end systems suppporting mobile applications often get deployed in public clouds, but need to connect back to data sources in the private cloud. Fathers also points out that VMware will be delivering a broader and broader collection of application services that will make this platform more and more attractive to developers. Hyrid applications—applications that span both the public cloud and the private cloud—are the future, Fathers states unequivocally. VMware is “ahead of the curve” in being prepared to help customers deal with hybrid applications, and Fathers introduces Raghu Raghuram to help talk about dealing with hybrid applications.

Raghuram provides an overview of why the unified hybrid cloud is the best way to deal with hybrid applications. VMware is making investments along three areas to help further the vision and reach of the unified hybrid cloud. The first area of investment is simplifying the private cloud. The second area of investment is extending into the public cloud. This means extending networking as well as extending management between the private cloud and the public cloud. The third area of investment is increasing the reach of public cloud services and public cloud providers, both from VMware as well as from VMware’s partners. Raghuram alludes to some of today’s announcements, and brings out Yangbing Li to talk about some of the engineering innovations around the unified hybrid cloud.

Li references announcements around the release of VMware NSX 6.2, VMware Virtual SAN 6.1, and VMware EVO SDDC (and VMware EVO SDDC Manager). VMware EVO SDDC enables zero to software-defined data center in just 2 hours (according to internal VMware testing). That’s the major part of the “simplify” portion of the three major areas of investment that Raghuram mentioned earlier (simplify, extend, reach). Li next moves to the “extend” portion, and talks about new developments in this area. The first new development mentioned is the extension of Content Library, first introduced in vSphere 6, to include both private and public clouds. No repackaging needed, Raghuram and Li explain, and they move on to networking (my favorite topic). VMware’s solution is the Hybrid Networking Services, built on NSX, that enable features like intelligent routing, strong encryption, WAN acceleration, and encryption (and one other thing I couldn’t capture). This leads to a discussion between Raghuram and Li about vMotion, and how you can use vMotion to move a workload between a private cloud and vCloud Air. Naturally, this new functionality in vMotion also enables you to vMotion workloads from vCloud Air to one’s private cloud as well. This functionality is being called Cross-Cloud vMotion. These two features—Content Library sync and Cross-Cloud vMotion—are together part of Project Skyscraper.

Li next talks about the use of blueprints to instantiate applications, and how VMware is extending blueprints to include provisioning across both private and public clouds. At this point, Raghuram leaves the stage, and Fathers takes the stage to talk about using all the stuff Li just covered to actually build and deploy a mobile application across private and public clouds.

This leads to a quick demo of Mobile Backend as a Service as provided by a VMware partner named Kinvey.

Li then recaps what she discussed, following the ages-old mantra of “tell people what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.”

Fathers takes over from Li to summarize what’s been shown. I’m going to wrap-up the liveblog at this point, since I have a meeting in just a few minutes and the session is now wrapping up.

UPDATE: Sorry about the incorrect title when I first published; I had to run from the Hang Space to a customer meeting and should have done a better job of proofreading.

In a way, How Would You Change is a bit like archeology, digging back through the gadgets of yesteryear to find out what we think of them now. We sat HP's Pavilion 14 Chromebook down in front of Myriam Joire, who did not have too many nice things to...

This is Daren’s first solo review for Slice of SciFi!

Cowabunga dude! Does the world really need another TMNT movie? Do we really need Turtles that love pizza and act like ninjas? Apparently Hollywood thinks we do. So, here we are, blessed with yet another reboot of those beloved Turtles.

Once upon a time in 1984, TMNT was a black and white comic book, self-published by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. These two young artists used money from a tax refund and a loan from Eastman’s uncle to finance the first issue. Slowly, word spread about this offbeat comic and collectors and distributors everywhere started to take notice. The TNMT franchise really took off once merchandising opportunities started in 1986. From toys to cartoons the turtles were everywhere. In fact, I’d be willing to bet most of the kids who grew up in the late 80’s and early 90’s are quite familiar with the TNMT’s.

In 1990, the first live action movie was released followed by two more sequels. These movies were quite successful and helped generate millions in merchandise sales. Had the world had enough? While the last live action TMNT was released in 1993, the franchise continued to thrive on TV and merchandise sales for the next 20 years. It’s actually amazing that it took 21 years for another live TMNT movie to be produced. How does this reboot fair? In one word: poorly.

The film starts off with news reporter April O’Neill (Megan Fox) investigating a wave of crimes hitting the city. April longs to be a legitimate reporter and feels this could be her big break. Instead, she ends up reporting about trampolines. Feeling this is not real reporting, she tells her cameraman (Will Arnett) about an ongoing investigation about the Foot Clan. April’s personal investigation ends up getting her fired and in turn motivates her to pursue the story. With the aid of her cameraman, they start a personal quest of learning the real truth behind Shredder and the Foot Clan.

Leading up to this movie, many TMNT fans were excited for this release and I’m curious what a true fan would say about these Turtles. Are they a worthy representation of the fabled franchise? In my opinion, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Ralphael, feel like 7-foot-tall cardboard cutouts with no personality. These guys tower over their human counterparts in a monster-like appearance. What happened to the classic look and feel that we’re accustomed to? Unlike previous live action TMNT movies, this version feels stale and lifeless. Gone is the humor and wonderful interplay between the Turtles. The relationships between each turtle is supposed to fun and loving but instead, it’s downright irritating. Maybe things would’ve been different if the turtles had more screen time to help develop and improve upon this weakness.

For the majority of the film, Megan Fox dominates screen time leaving me wonder if this movie should’ve been called April O’Neill guest starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In addition to these boring turtles, the action sequences felt forced and uninspired save for one chase scene on a snowy mountain. You’d think with modern CGI technology, there would be awesome set pieces and wonderful special effects but instead, we’re left with dark boring scenes. For most of the movie, I was bored and felt like leaving the theater because of the paper-thin plot and poorly executed fight scenes.

If there are sequels planned for the future, I think I’ll pass on the next release.

   

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In the software business, most folks work in an office. Maybe a quiet, private one, or one of the dastardly open plan ones. But not usually, say, a sports arena. Or in a moving vehicle.

Sometimes, this fact is lost on the people making the software. They design buttons that are washed out when the surveyor on a phone or tablet views it outside in the sun. Or they use too many external libraries in the HTML and end up swamping users who are on high-latency connections.

Most of the time, these bugs (either in design, specification, or implementation) merely create confusion and decreased user satisfaction.

Occasionally, however, they kill people.

Although the three deaths from the Therac-25 are ultimately classified as engineering failures, mainly resulting from lack of testing and other process deficiencies, it’s possible that they could have been detected earlier if someone had observed the users operating the system:

The fifth accident occurred at the same location as the fourth. As a result, someone besides the AECL engineers had knowledge that more than one possible accident transpired while using the Therac-25. A physicists [sic] from the hospital where the two accidents occurred investigated both accidents thoroughly, discovering that the accidents were due to the quick changes made to the setup parameters by the machine operators. Through a quick series of returns, the physicists could reproduce the “Malfunction 54” error, something that AECL never could do (Leveson and Turner, 1993).

One day, back in college, I was interning at a software company that made software and hardware that powered ready-mix concrete plants. We had front-office ticketing software that ran on a PC and batch-plant automation hardware that ran on a real-time OS.

These plants are noisy, exposed to the elements, and somewhat dangerous. Sitting in our comfortable chairs in the middle of central Ohio, it was too easy to forget that the users were in considerably different environments.

To that end, the head of engineering kept a framed picture on his desk of a typical ready-mix user, complete with hard-hat, operating the system. Below the picture was the description: “Remember your target audience!”

I carry that philosophy with me every day. In every company I’ve worked, I’ve setup personas that have pictures and bios of actual customers attached and posted them in prominent positions. Not only does this put a face to the name, but helps everyone on the product team use them in discussion “Yeah, but how would Rosie use this?” – building empathy with and understanding of the customer.

If possible, I also organize “field-trips” to customer sites to actually see how users operate our software in the field – ensuring we never forget who uses our products, and how.

Oh man, I have a terrible fear of heights.

bonus panel

It’s probably like one of those tower defense games.  This was just the first wave.  Just you wait until the 20th wave.

Comic URL: http://www.lefthandedtoons.com/1453/

We've seen electric off-roaders tackle the Dakar Rally, but racing on the Baja peninsula has proven elusive -- until this weekend. After driving in smaller races, SRI's EV1 has joined the big leagues by starting in NORRA's Mexican 1000 rally. The 535HP, 400kW open-wheeler has participated in at least the first trio of special stages, and it will ideally join a handful of further stages that fit within the vehicle's 100-mile range. While the EV1 is far from the front of the Evolution class, at 36th place as of this writing, winning isn't the point -- SRI wants to drum up enough funding to hot-swap batteries and complete every stage in future races. Its project should at least be proof that smaller EVs can thrive in some of the world's harshest racing conditions.

Filed under: Transportation

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Via: Autoblog

Source: SRD (Facebook), SRI, NORRA

Happy…April!

I have quite a bit to talk about today, got a moment to read?

Thanks for all the birthday wishes yesterday! Despite having work and drinking a ton in the evening, I also managed to get some drawing done. This strip in particular was created during two Livestream sessions!

If you are interested in seeing more live drawing, follow me on Twitter, Like the Facebook page, or sign up to Livestream itself and you’ll always be kept in the loop when the camera goes live! Sessions aren’t recorded, so if you miss out, better luck next time!

Thanks to everyone who watched this strip being completed – it was great fun! I hope to do more in the future!

Secondly, this strip is homage to the first Crazy Sunshine gag I ever created here, despite it being uploaded after the character introductions. Lacie has always had a tenancy to burn stuff down. It started with a house  and now, well, yeah, a whole city! I feel like the gag-a-strip portion of the comic has come full circle, and personally think it’s improved quite a bit.

Plus what better timing too, as lastly, I urge all readers to read today’s Devblog entry. It contains very important information about future developments and the direction of the comic over the course of the next year or so! Don’t miss out!

See you next week for a big surprise – you’ll see why very soon!

Thanks for always supporting both me and the comic!