Yahoo Cloud Computing with 4th Largest Supercomputer in World

Yahoo announced an agreement today with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) to support cloud computing research. At Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York last week, Yahoo Chief Scientist Andrew Tomkins previewed the future of search in his keynote address. (For a video of his keynote click here soon.) No doubt cloud computing will one day make search engine innovations possible that we can only dream of today.

CRL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd., a Mumbai, India-based industrial conglomerate, will lend one of the world’s top five supercomputers to Yahoo for joint research. The CRL supercomptuter has “substantially more processors than any supercomputer currently available,” according to Yahoo.

The first Data-Intensive Computing Symposium held at Yahoo’s campus this week will bring together leading industry and academic experts from all aspects of data-intensive distributed computing.

The symposium is part of a larger effort to explore opportunities for research and application of large-scale computing to benefit applications ranging from machine translation to genomic medicine.

So who in the world are CRL and Tata?

Tata Sons Limited–founded in 1868–could be the poster boy for The Big Switch, a brilliant book by SES keynote speaker, thought leader, and Mike Arrington BFF Nick Carr on the transformation of corporations and computing leading up to the Age of the Internet and beyond Google.

Tata Sons Limited has reinvented itself to keep pace with global changes in technology. The privately-held company, founded in 1868, provides voice and data-based business outsourcing services through one of its subsidiaries.

Tata, through its subsidiaries, provides solutions for projects in water supply and wastewater, industry, power, and chemicals; identification of land, project conceptualization, designing, construction, marketing, and management of residential and commercial complexes; financial consultancy services, financial planning, investment banking and strategy consulting services.

The company also engages in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas.

Tata companies include Tata Chemicals, Indian Hotels, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Tea, TACO, Tata Technologies, Titan Industries, and Tata Communications.

That’s a lot of computing power to put in the clouds. The Yahoo/CRL effort promises to leverage CRL’s expertise in high performance computing and Yahoo’s technical leadership in the Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop, an open source distributed computing project. The benefit: enables scientists to perform data-intensive computing research on a 14,400 processor supercomputer.

The first ever Hadoop Summit (sponsored by Yahoo! and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), funded by the National Science Foundation), brings together Hadoop developer and user communities to discuss current projects and future directions of the cloud computing environment.

 

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Why Does Google Hate Link Manipulation?

Anyone who knows the Google Web Spam team well, knows that they all have a huge distaste for link manipulation. In my opinion, it is more than just a distance for some of the web spam team members, specifically Matt Cutts.

Matt Cutts, a great guy, Google engineer since January 2000, has a strong, deep, gut wrenching distaste for link manipulation, in my opinion. Where do I get this opinion from? I don’t think from our conversations but from watching Matt write and communicate with webmasters on link issues since early 2003.

Let me pull out one recent post by Matt Cutts that demonstrates it. A Sphinn thread, Matt writes:

Todd, what about a query like [symptoms of a heart attack]? The searcher wants accurate results ASAP, and might not have enough time or patience to research the subject thoroughly. We think about searches like this and issues like this all the time, which is why Google may come across as humorless when we talk about some linking issues.I thought Eric made a pretty compelling argument. When you search, you don’t want a search engine that is “fooled” by lower-quality links. And if you’re trying to compete for search rankings fairly, you don’t want a site that takes short cuts to do better than your site. That’s why it’s so helpful to have great content first and foremost and then promote that content well as opposed to just building links to low-quality content.

Just read that. Do people search for such things? I would think so. I don’t think heart attacks are sudden always and I hear many people get them without knowing, they just feel discomfort. So Matt takes this stuff beyond seriously, but sometimes, I feel, personally. Imagine, spending eight plus years working at a company to build out a search experience that provides as much help to the searcher as possible. Now, imagine you have people come in and try to manipulate that? In my opinion, it would take a strong man to not take that somewhat personally. Of course, Googlers can’t take it personally, but in some cases - it can be hard not to.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

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Wordpress 2.3.3 Hidden Links Injection Exploit and How To Not Let It Happen To You

A friend yesterday running the latest version of wordpress had some hidden links injected in his blog. I know he is very technical and knows what he is doing so started making me a little paranoid. I started search for Wordpress 2.3.3 hidden links injection and as you can see there is a ton of people claiming to be running the latest and greatest Wordpress version yet getting hidden links inserted in there posts. People are also inserting iframes. Its actually pretty effective if you think about it… How would you notice hidden links in old posts?

First I want to say I have never seen any evidence of a fresh 2.3.3 install of Wordpress.

The issue most likely comes from either a previous exploitable file still existing in your Wordpress install directory or from someone who has already hijacked your admin cookie. You see there were some wicked exploits in earlier versions that allowed people to hijack your admin cookie which authenticates you (keep me logged in).

So what to do…. well if you have Wordpress 2.3.3 and you are getting owned regularly here is what you need to do.

1) Make a new fresh install of Wordpress and copy over your must have files… like themes, plugins (MAKE SURE THEY ARE UP TO DATE) , images, wp-config.php

2) change your password right away. In case someone has a old hash of your password.

If you have been following the proper upgrade instructions (minus changing the admin pass) on the Wordpress you should have been doing this the whole time… ya I know I was not either.

If you are a nerd like me you might want to use SVN which is super dope and is a better and easier way to keep up to date if you know how to use SVN. Here are the instructions for that

Anyway security wise out of the box most web servers are not going to help you find out the root of the problem. Most of these are POST requests and unless you are specifically logging them of have mod_security installed …. there is no log anywhere of any POST request to your web server other then one happened.

Thanks to wordpress developer donncha ocaoimh for answering my twitter

Hope this helps anyone who is having there wordpress 2.3.3 getting owned.

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Extend Firefox, win stuff: The joy of the bounty

Mozilla has launched the Extend Firefox 3 contest, with some pretty cool prizes in the offing for the winners (including a MacBook Air). The purpose? To encourage more and better add-ons for Firefox.It’s similar in many ways to Atlassian’s $30,000 bounty program, which is giving away $5,000 bounties for individual plug-ins built for Jira, Confluence, and its other software.

Bounty programs have been around for years. The Ximian team used these somewhat effectively early on at Novell (and prior to that), which was my first experience with them. Since then, the number of bounties has grown considerably within the open-source world.

I personally am not a big fan of bounties, as I don’t think they go to the heart of why many developers write open-source code in the first place: pride of ownership, experimentation, intellectual pursuit.

But, if nothing else, they do call attention to a need (More plug-ins for Firefox and the Atlassian projects, in this case). It’s not as if Mozilla is hurting for Firefox plug-ins. But it may be that it’s trying to remind developers to update their Firefox 2 plug-ins for Firefox 3, and this offers a convenient, relatively inexpensive way to do so.

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Apple playing hard to get with iPhone

Your perception of Apple’s iPhone probably has a lot to do with your personal philosophy of computing.

Do you want unfettered freedom to run anything, whenever and however you want it? Or do you only need a few vital applications to make you happy, and really just want the damn thing to work reliably?

In these, the early days of the iPhone, it’s very clear that Apple has taken a very cautious approach to independent iPhone developers and software development. Contrast that approach with Microsoft, which built a PC empire catering to developers’ needs, and would like to expand that into the mobile realm.

Some developers are peeved that Apple isn’t giving them as much access to the iPhone as they’d like.

However, developing software for mobile devices has been, and seems like it will be, very different from the development process for PCs and Macs. How this give-and-take between operating system developers and application developers evolves–not just at Apple, but for smartphone development in general–could dictate the evolution of truly mobile computing.

If limiting the role of independent developers helps create secure and reliable computers, doesn’t that seem worth it to everyone? (Except, of course, to the developers.) That seems to be Apple’s position, although the company declined an interview request in search of a clearer picture. The vast majority of developers are professionals or hobbyists who wouldn’t dream of writing inferior or malicious code, but viruses, malware, and poorly written applications still proliferate.

On the other hand, imagine how you’d feel if another company controlled everything you can or can’t do with its product after you brought it home. I don’t think people would be too thrilled if Honda decided that the after-market installation of a third-party stereo voided the warranty, based on the rationale that the car is now much more likely to be stolen.

Such is the hubbub over the iPhone software development kit, which is still a work in progress. Some developers, captivated by the promise of the iPhone’s unique combination of touch screen, accelerometer, and Mac OS X goodies, have been chastened to learn that they won’t be able to create applications the way they want because of restrictions imposed by Apple on development tactics.

There are several bones of contention, but the primary concern seems to be the decision to prohibit third-party applications from running in the background. Apple warned developers of this restriction in the iPhone SDK documentation, and urged them to develop applications that are capable of quickly saving information, and then closing, when the user decides to switch to another application.

This policy makes it extremely difficult to create Web-aware native applications, wrote Hank Williams, a blogger working on mobile-software development. “The issue of background processing is *the* issue for a mobile device because it is key to two things: telling the world about your status in some ongoing way, (and) receiving notification of important events.”

That makes sense; remember that friend or relative who got a mobile phone but never turned it on? That practice greatly diminishes (although some might say it enhances) the value of a mobile communications device, and one-way communication is not what has made the Web so interesting in its second decade.

The thing is, you can’t expect everything from the PC Web world to work the same way on a battery-operated device. Craig Hockenberry, another developer, agrees that background processing is nice to have, but impractical right now on anything with a battery. (Thanks to John Gruber at Daring Fireball for the links.)

Hockenberry built an unofficial iPhone version of Twitteriffic, a Mac application he wrote that gathers “tweets” from people you’re following on Twitter. An early version for the iPhone had a component that ran in the background to automatically gather tweets every five minutes.

The result? “Both the EDGE and Wi-Fi transceivers have significant power requirements. Whenever that hardware is on, your battery life is going to suck. My five-minute refresh kept the hardware on and used up a lot of precious power,” Hockenberry wrote.

Other mobile operating systems such as Symbian, however, don’t restrict processes from running in the background. And Nokia’s N95, which runs Symbian, can browse the Web for longer periods of time than the iPhone, according to one test.

So what is this really about? Maybe it’s about avoiding the mistakes of the past.

Software developers were the lifeline for PC users before broadband Internet became pervasive. If you wanted to do anything interesting with a PC, you needed application software, and so developers of both consumer and corporate applications were endlessly courted by Microsoft.

People want more applications than Apple can deliver. But how open should the process be?

That brought the world tons of great applications. But it also brought security nightmares, blue screens of death, and sluggish computers that hog resources. The mobile world can’t afford to let that all happen again; people have gotten used to a bit of “funk” from their PCs. They don’t tolerate that from their phones.

So, don’t expect to see Apple CEO Steve Jobs pacing the stage at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June while screaming “Developers! Developers! Developers!” At times, Apple seems to treat software developers like a necessary evil, acknowledging that they have a role to play but wary of letting them damage the product. Much of Apple’s pitch for the Mac is that everything works, and it’s easier to make that pitch when you retain so much control over what runs on the platform.

That stance naturally doesn’t sit well with the developers, who are used to different treatment from the likes of Microsoft, Symbian, Palm, and others. But what if that’s what it takes to produce a reliable product? After all, the fewer things you install on a PC or Mac, the more reliable it tends to be.

That’s the tradeoff Apple is trying to make with the iPhone as it evolves. There’s no doubt that the iPhone needs third-party applications. But do smartphone owners need the flexibility and breadth of applications that are available for the PC and Mac?

Apple is arguing through its SDK restrictions that, at the moment, they don’t, and I’m inclined to believe them: for now. If smartphones really do turn into mobile computers, Apple will have to acquiesce–at least somewhat–to the need for broader third-party development that can truly exploit the iPhone. After all, that unofficial parallel iPhone development path doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, meaning that people really do want more than just Apple’s stock applications, and they’ll want some things Apple’s not inclined to provide.

So for now, if you want to run anything and everything on an iPhone, buy one and jailbreak it. If you want a more stable controlled experience, only install what Apple and the App Store provides.

However, what we really need is both. And that’s something Apple will have to tackle during the second year of the iPhone. There’s no shame in taking baby steps while building a business from scratch, but you’ve got to take the training wheels off at some point.

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Finished Installing Windows Vista SP1 ? Now Remove All The Junk Files

When you install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on your computer, the SP1 installer will not remove the older versions of Vista files from the hard drive. This is because the older files may be required in case you decide to uninstall SP1 later from the system.

Naturally, these files occupy important disk space. If you are satisfied with the performance of Windows Vista SP1 and unlikely to remove it later, why not reclaim some disk space by removing all the older Vista files.

There are no manual steps involved. Just open your Windows command prompt and type vsp1cln.exe (short for Vista SP1 Cleaner). It takes less than a minute to execute.

*vsp1cln.exe is added to your Windows Vista System folder after you install Vista SP1.

This will make Windows Vista Service Pack 1 permanent on this computer. All the older files are deleted now and your hard disk has tons of extra space for other important files like videos and photos.

You computer need not be connected to the Internet for running the Vista SP1 cleaner tool. And you won’t be able to remove Windows Vista Service Pack 1 later.
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