What is Data? I Mean, Really, What Is It?

by on April 23, 2010

Let’s try to answer this question in a top-down manner.

A great deal of data lives in computers; exabytes of it. Recent estimates published by Caltech suggest that the world generates 2 exabytes of data per year, but that figure is itself growing. The amount of data we store grows by about 60 percent a year and there’s no end in sight. It just keeps on growing. Every now and then we have to invent a new “largest measure of data”; megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte and the very latest word in data volumes; yottabyte. A yottabyte is a billion billion megabytes. Right now there are no yottabytes of data, but there probably will be in a few decades.

The words “data”, “information” and “knowledge” don’t quite convey the utter importance of data within an organization. It is, in many ways, the life blood of an organization.

Before computers existed we kept information on paper mainly, but also stored it in photographs or on film. In those days we stored a lot less data, partly because storing it was expensive. Go back centuries, to before printing was invented, and we stored even less data. Books had to be written by hand, so data storage was really expensive. There was probably only a few gigabytes of stored data in the whole world, even counting copies of books. And there were monasteries whose only purpose was to write out new copies of the Bible – Xerox machines of a kind.

Continued here – clink on this link.

Note: This is a posting in a series of data integration postings that are being published by Pervasive Software.

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The Tea Party: Rebels Without a Clue

by on March 29, 2010

The following is taken from Rosie O’Donnell’s blog. It’s not that I particularly agree with her political views, but I think it makes an interesting point, and she requested that others “pass it on.”

America has changed in a rather strange way. It’s more disturbing if you are on the inside than when you view it from the outside. There is a now a “pretend TV news channel” (Fox News, better named as Faux News) that devotes most of its energy to spreading propaganda. It was always to the right, but now it has dropped all pretense of impartiality. It is driving and inflaming activists most of whom are (according to polls) on the right or far right of the political spectrum, whose most coherent uttering is “We’re angry!”

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

The truth is that most of the so-called Tea Party actually got mad when a very large majority of the US electorate voted to have a black centrist President. However, it is also clear the the Tea Party has a bark that is far worse than its bite. In vote getting terms, it is clearly impotent.

In some ways, the political situation in America now resembles the early years of the rise of Nazism in Germany. Mass unemployment (way beyond current levels) would probably tip the balance, so here’s hoping it doesn’t come about.

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Life Imitates Political Art

February 19, 2010

I live in Austin Texas. Yesterday in Austin, in the most surreal event to happen so far this decade, a software engineer called Joe Stack (good name that, for a software engineer) flew his his Piper Cherokee PA-28 airplane, loaded with 50 gallons of fuel, into the IRS offices in Austin.

Joe Stack simply snapped. It was an irrational gesture born of a hatred for the IRS, with whom he’d clearly had an adversarial relationship for years. Joe snapped. He put a suicide note on the Internet. He drove his wife and child out of the house. He set the house on fire and then he got in his airplane and crashed it into the Austin IRS building.

Events like this happen in good times, but they seem more common in harsh economic times. OK It’s tough out there.

Political Art

This was no more of a political act that me putting the cat out at night. It happens every now and then. In America as elsewhere, sometimes people snap. The normal outcome is that they get a gun and shoot a few people, before they get taken down. They don’t normally crash airplanes into buildings.

The only previous examples of crashing an airplane into a building was the immensely political strike of 9/11 and the strange loner action a few months later when a 15-year-old boy crashed a Cessna into the 42-story Bank of America Plaza building in Tampa, Florida. This too was a political act, if a very strange one. The boy left a suicide note indicating that he acted alone and that he supported Osama Bin Laden.

However, in America right now, the media, especially Fox News (the broadcasting arm of the Republican Party), tries to turn everything into a political act.

“If you put your cat out at night, the terrorists win.”

I heard about this event over the phone by the way. Probably because I live in Austin. The local jungle drums may this time have worked a little faster than Twitter. My wife was on the phone to  her boss (she was working from home) who was interrupted on the call by her husband who had just been told of the event that had happened a few moments before.

The Austin press and TV were all over it instantly – and well they might be, because all the footage of everything could be syndicated across the world. Reporters were out interviewing the neighbours of the guy. There were reporters at the airfield just North of Austin, where the plane took off and there were reporters interviewing the survivors who had evacuated the building. Luckily only a few people were killed. It could have been worse.

Watching the news happen, I noticed the usual misinformation effect. There were reports, for example, that the air plane had been stolen. Not true. One wonders where they came from. Two jets were scrambled from Houston, in case some larger terrorist attack was in progress, but it clearly wasn’t.

It Was Just Life Imitating Art

We are all capable of delinquent, destructive and suicidal acts. We choose not to do them, indeed we choose not to even think of doing them. We could buy guns and shoot. We could go on the Internet and find how to make explosives and then make bombs. We could derail trains. We could drop concrete blocks onto traffic from bridges. Society has no defence against a lunatic who doesn’t mind dying. It has no defence against someone who snaps. But socity is big. It can take hits like that and move on.

If this had been a gunman, it would have been “just another crazy shooter”. But this was an airplane suicide and all previous acts of this nature in America were political. This event was tailor-made for the political amplifiers of every description.

  • He was white and not Islamic. So was he another Timothy McVeigh?
  • He hated the IRS. So was he a Tea Party wing nut?
  • There was (almost unbelievably so) an FBI office and a CIA office in that building. So is there a conspiracy here?
  • Will Fox News claim that “he was driven to this desperate act by the Obama regime”?
  • Will MSNBC claim that Glen Beck has incited such crazies to acts like this?

No. He just snapped, and killed himself in a very destructive manner. That is all.

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How To Unbrick The iPhone

February 7, 2010

It was Saturday morning. I plugged my iphone into my Mac to charge it up. And I left it to charge. After the battery was shown as fully charged, I was politely informed by iTunes that there was another version of the iPhone OS (and firmware I suspect).  Should I load it?

Apple frequently informs me of upgrades and I always take them. Nothing ever seems to go wrong. It’s been that way since I switched to the Mac in 2004. Saturday was the exception.

How My iPhone Became a Brick

The software began to download. I waited. It started loading on the iPhone. Just before it completed it gave me a message.

“Unable to restore iPhone. Error 14 Unknown error”

My iPhone was now a brick. I wasn’t concerned immediately. I just figured it was a random irregularity. I hadn’t jail-broken the iPhone or anything, so it had to be a simple problem. So I tried again. And I got error 14 again. So I went to Apple’s site and read Apple’s suggestion on what to do, such as reboot your Mac/PC then try again, or try it on a different iMac.

I had lost the data on the iPhone, by the way. Once your iPhone is a brick, it gets amnesia and never recovers. You have to reconstitute it. However all data was backed up, so I wasn’t worried.

To cut a long story short, I tried everything Apple recommended, then tried every idea I could find on various iPhone forums. I wasted three hours and all I got was error 14 every time, except once, when iTunes suggested I needed to load different firmware. Well Duh! So I decided to visit the AT&T shop from whence I got the phone.

They were utterly useless. They plugged it it, tried to fix it and gave up after 5 minutes. They knew nothing. I was tempted to tell them that “my phone was now a brick so please replace it.” But I didn’t, because they suggested that I visit the Genius Bar at the local Apple chapel, and I knew that if AT&T gave me a new iPhone there would be hassle in getting it configured to my number. So I went to the local Apple Store, only to discover that I wouldn’t be able to get an appointment with an “Apple Genius” until 11.50 the following day. But never mind, a helpful assistant said he’d see what he coudl do and waltzed off with my Phone. He returned 20 minutes later, to inform me that only a genius could fix it. So I booked in for the following day and went home.

How To Unbrick The iPhone

When I got home, I started to think my way through the problem. I realized I hadn’t done that. I’d just tried every suggestion I’d run into. Most likely the iPhone was corrupted at an OS or firmware level. Quite possibly the download I had originally tried had become corrupt. So, I needed to clean down the phone.

Quite possibly the download I’d loaded was lurking somewhere on my Mac. So this is what I did:

  1. I cleaned down the iPhone by putting it in DFU mode (Where DFU stands for Device Firmware Upgrade).
  2. I found the download on my Mac and deleted it.

DFU mode. You put an iPhone in DFU mode by doing the following:

  • For about 7 seconds keep the “power/lock’ button (top of the phone) and the “home” button pressed – until the iPhone screen goes black.
  • Keep them pressed for an extra 2 seconds, then release the “power/lock’ button
  • iTunes will then see the the iPhone after about 10 seconds. Now you release the “home” button.
  • The iPhone is now in DFU mode.
  • You can now reformat the iPhone by reloading everything, but first delete the previous download.

New download. I acquired a valid download by doing the following:

  • I went to /library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/
  • There was a file there which has a name similar to iPhone2,1_3.3.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw. This ipsw file was probably corrupted. So I deleted it. If you don’t delete this, iTunes will try to load it and you’ll have the same problem as before. It all probability, this file is corrupt.
  • I restored the iPhone and it worked – because I had reformatted the iPhone and got a fresh update for it.
  • Once the iPhone was restored, I reloaded the phone from the last backup.

The only way that this is likely to fail is if the download of the new OS/firmware gets corrupted. So, if it fails, repeat. If this doesn’t work then the odds are that you have a hardware defect and it’s time to get the handset replaced.

The reason I have explained all this is that I couldn’t find an explanation of this on the web. There may be other stuff out there that tells you what to do, but I couldn’t find anything that tells you why you’re doing it.

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Bizarre Browser Advice: Abandon Internet Explorer!

January 18, 2010

Last week the German government warned web users to ditch Internet Explorer and go with some alternative (Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari being the obvious choices).

Why?

As far as  I can tell there is a fairly vicious exploit out there which preys on IE version 6.0. It uses an invalid pointer reference to allow it to remotely execute code and hence place a trojan on your PC to steal your information. Microsoft has released Security Advisory #979352, which you can read about here.

The problem only impacts customers using IE6 and while that may still be around 20% of web users, IE7 and IE8 are not vulnerable to this exploit. And even so, to get infected you have to visit a rogue web site with the exploit embedded in it. There are emails in circulation that try to provoke you into doing that. So the risk is there, but it’s not particularly high.

It has to be said that it is not Microsoft’s fault that IE6 users have not upgraded. Many people like myself, who build web sites, gave up trying to accommodate IE6 quite a while ago. It was a bad non-standard release that often generates rendering problems for CSS coders. Microsoft fixed that and moved on. IE6 security was poor as this latest exploit demonstrates. Microsoft will surely produce a fix in time, but Microsoft recommends upgrading or setting Internet zone security in IE6 to high.

So why did the German government suddenly recommend to its citizens to drop this software product?

Even more bizarrely, this morning France has piled in and advised its citizens to drop IE too. Certa, a French government agency that oversees cyber threats, warned against using all versions of the web browser.

What is behind this?

I can only presume that European governments have been spooked by the Chinese attacks on Google and believe that they have to be proactive in order to protect their economies and citizens. However neither government has explained what is wrong with IE7 or IE8. IE8 was designed for security and Microsoft claims that it is the most secure of the browsers.

My advice, until someone demonstrates otherwise is that IE8 is safe, so upgrade unless you were wanting to change browsers anyway.

If a serious vulnerability suddenly emerges in Firefox or Safari, are the French and German governments going to advise you to switch browsers again?

 

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Google's Nexus One Error

January 14, 2010

I had a long discussion yesterday about Google’s phone that kicked the ball up and down the street. It concluded in an agreement that the Google phone is a mistake. Here’s the rationale:

  • The Nexus One is really not that good, compared to the Droid, for example, never mind comparing it with the iPhone. That’s bad news for brand reasons.
  • Google is not a device company, yet and it shouldn’t become one. It’s a tough road. Look at the problems Microsoft has been having with Zune, for example.
  • Does Google even have it to become a device company quickly or even slowly. Does it really have the ability, not just to build a phone, but to keep a phone competitive.
  • If it becomes a successful device company (which is, I admit, a possible route for it) then it will lose all those companies that are enthusiastically queuing up to build Android devices (cell phones or net books or tablets). They’ll go elsewhere – to Linux probably. The Google app store will be damaged.
  • Why put yourself in direct competition with Apple on Apple’s territory?
  • Google’s real revenue stream in the mobile market is adverts. That means it needs to inveigle its way onto as many devices as possible (via its app store). A phone of its own doesn’t help.

Google should bury the phone and do what it does best. It should forget about Chrome OS devices too.

Having said that: Kudos to Google for standing up to the Chinese.

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A Gradual Emigration

January 2, 2010

As I remarked a while back, I’m gradually moving much of the content of this site to The Virtual Circle, which is going to be a more organized repository of writings. Here, I’ll just write a blog – which means no analysis but comments on this, that and the other – and breaking IT news.

I’ve done my 10 Predictions for the coming year and I’ve finally finished all my Xmas Words You Don’t know, which I amused myself with over Christmas. Here’s the full list, with meanings, in case you don’t want to read the associated posting.

#1 Hwoelor-tid; Yule tide (a Norse alternative)

#2 Brumalia; The Roman Winter Solstice feast.

#3 Protomartyr; The first Christian martyr in a country

#4 Dulocracy; Givernment by slaves

#5 Pohutukawa; The New Zealand Christmas tree.

#6 Hagiolatry; The worship od saints.

#7 Sinterklaas; Santa Claus

#8 Prolicide; The murder of your sons.

#9 Apophoret; An end of year gift.

#10 Kenosis; The manifestation of God as man#

11 Psilanthropy; The belief that Jesus was just a man.

#12 Parepochism; Errors in assigning dates to historical events.

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The Coming of the iSlate

December 30, 2009

Despite the Kremlin-like secrecy of Apple, words has been leaking out for almost a year now about the coming tablet or (as rumor will have it) the iSlate. iSlate is a brand that Apple controls so the current reading of the runes suggest that Apple will be announcing the iSlate at the ned of january and will be delivering them by march. The rumor is so strong that it has added about 5 percent to Apple’s stock price.

Apple’s competitors (HP, Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Nokia, Motorola, and even Google) are going to find it hard to keep up pace. In fact only Google is likely to be able to. For them, the problem with Apple is that it innovates as a matter of course. Rumor has it (and you only ever get rumor about what happens within Apple) that the slate has been in preparation since about 2002. Commentators, myself including, are convincing ourselves (on the basis of no hard evidence whatsoever) that Apple has another iPhone up its sleeve.

If it does, it will be game changing.

And there’s still another shoe to drop. The reason that Apple TV is such a moribund product is the the Apple genius engine has yet to put its finger on what the home media device needs to be. The Apple TV is currently a joke of a product, but deep inside you know that eventually it is going to be something much better.

I’ll do a full New Year review of Apple in the coming week, but right now my view is that the next decade belongs to Apple and Google. They are Castor and Pollux, although which of the two is mortal has yet to be determined. (In Greek myth, Castor was mortal but Pollux was immortal).

I wrote a piece yesterday about Firefox and why I’m abandoning it, I’ve also been writing a whole series of Xmas “words you don’k know” which currently includes the following words: #1 Hwoelor-tid, #2 Brumalia, #3 Protomartyr, #4 Dulocracy, #5 Pohutukawa, #6 Hagiolatry, #7 Sinterklaas, #8 Prolicide, #9 Apophoret

There are 3 more to be added before I’m done.

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New Web Site: The Virtual Circle

November 20, 2009

Those that follow this blog will know that I split it into two distinct pieces when I set up Words You Don’t Know (.com) about 4 months ago. Well I’m doing it again, by splitting off all the technology writing that I do (75% of what I write, to tell the truth) to a new web site, entitled The Virtual Circle (.com). If you visit this site, you’ll notice that it is not quite complete but very close to it.

The Virtual Circle

The Virtual Circle is intended to become an IT Site with some social networking capability and, it is also intended to become a platform for others that wish to post technical articles. At the moment the social networking capabilities are invisible. It will also accept other IT Analysts and other IT professionals as contributors. Again the capabilities for that are not visible either.

The point of this posting is simply to warn you that all my further blog postings relating to IT will now happen on The Virtual Circle…

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The Momentum of Apple

November 13, 2009

Sometimes companies surf on the momentum of the market. All companies would love to be able to do that. IBM did it in the heady years of mainframe computing and Microsoft did it when Windows started on its extraordinary growth trajectory. It’s an easy situation to manage. In order to continue to be successful you just need to continue to do what you have been doing. This is where Apple is right now.

The Dynamics of Apple’s Success.

The drivers of Apple’s success are clearly multidimensional, iTunes, the Apple Stores, cool design, product quality and reliability, innovation, brilliant PR and advertising. But the foundations of it all are the products. Apple has two successful product lines, the iPhone/iPod and the Macs. These are not their only product families, but if you discount peripheral products, the only other product family is the Apple TV and it has not yet matured to the point where it is going to influence Apple’s success in any significant way.

In October, according to Gartner, US Mac shipments grew 11 percent year over year allowing Apple to claim  9.4 percent of the U.S. PC market (by units) but only about 5.27% of the Global PC market by units. There are some corporate PC sales in there, but the truth is that the consumer market is where the Mac is making its big impact. Success is partly driven by the retail stores, which account for about 20% of Apple’s revenues and are magnets for new buyers of Macs. A full 50% of Mac buyers at the retail stores are switching from PCs.

If you look at the iPhone market you see Apple selling about 20 million iPhones per year (about 7 million in the most recent quarter), with smart phone market share estimated to be about 30% in the US, but about 17% world-wide (according to Gartner).

In both markets Apple is outgrowing the market and outgrowing the competition. In terms of revenue, all Apple needs to do to succeed is to walk a straight line. For the Mac, that means broadening the channels to market in new geographical areas and continuing to open Apple Stores across the world. Apple plans to increase the number of Apple store by up to 20% next year. I was struck by a story recently of Apple opening up its first store in Paris. I was surprised that Apple had such a weak presence in the French market. The same is probably true of most countries aside from the US. Even in the UK, Apple has only a handful of stores – and its market share (at 5%) could be doubled. And, of course Apple needs to pursue its advertising strategy in new markets.

With the iPhone/iPod, the story is similar. Apple is constrained to some degree by the exclusive deals it struck with carriers soon after the phone launched. But it doesn’t do exclusive any more, and its existing exclusive deals will be running out soon. It’s hard to imagine the iPhone not doubling its current market share. Most likely it will go much higher – and the smart phone market is itself expanding, of course.

The Technical Position – PC

Microsoft could not have given Apple a better present than Vista. For a couple of years Microsoft was stuck with a clearly and obviously inferior OS to Apple and the consumer market was gradually but inexorably heading in Apple’s direction. Some momentum in the business market naturally followed.

Windows 7 may have staunched some of the bleeding. It’s a great deal better than Vista. But I doubt if it’s fixed the problem. Microsoft opened the door to Apple, and it’s too late to close it. Apple has “the initiative”, as they say in chess. The Mac OS X ecosystems is still ahead, it’s just that Windows 7 now has no obvious embarrassing defects. Windows could conceivably catch OS X in time, but it’s hard to imagine it overtaking OS X. All the innovation is still coming from Apple.

And Microsoft has nothing, absolutely nothing, to match the iPhone. The halo effect of the iPhone sells Macs.

Click to continue reading “The Momentum of Apple”

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