Controllable spider shows just how good flash can be.

Play With Spider - Flash 3D - OneMotion.com

Objectica adds full-scale, perfectly integrated object orientation to Mathematica. You can rapidly build your mathematical models using classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation. With Objectica, the capabilities of Mathematica are combined with the power of object orientation.

In addition to its simple and easy-to-learn syntax, Objectica has many consistency checks and automatisms that support your development, especially in a commercial environment. Objectica enables more productive development and leaves more room for thorough model creation by allowing you to:

Objectica: Your Simulation with Mathematica's Object Orientation

In SQS, a queue is a list of entries. An entry is a blob of data. When you create a queue, it's empty until you put entries on it. You can then read the entries you put on the queue. Entries remain on the queue until you explicitly delete them. The ordering of the queue is FIFO (First In, First Out). However, because access to the queues is heavily cached for performance reasons, Amazon does not guarantee FIFO access--occasionally, SQS requests may return results in a slightly different order than FIFO.

XML.com: Fun with Amazon's Simple Queue Service

Overview
At my job, we've just about finished work on the next segment of our Catalyst-based application. It required the implementation of a JobQueue system, and after careful consideration we narrowed down our choices.

Why TheSchwartz?
Aside from the fun statements that are made while working it into every day business conversation, it had a few things that really stood out over the competition. What competition, you say? Well, we really didn't have many options. Our choices for a reliable jobqueue (reliable meaning it handles failure conditions internally, and can guarantee success or failure) were really TheSchwartz, Catalyst::Engine::JobQueue or a home grown solution. TheSchwartz was really the only choice.

Getting it running
Setup was actually very simple. Aside from the hidden doc directory containing the schema, it was all laid out in a sane fashion. We configured one of our higher powered slaves to be the jobqueue database, and created the InnoDB tables. After that, configuring the test cases to use our DB and we were in business. Things couldn't have gone easier, really. Well, maybe if there was more Pod available but I'm not complaining one bit, considering how well it works.nullnullnull

Catalyst and TheSchwartz: Reliable JobQueue in a great framework - Vox

Star Caller makes use of the Amazon Cloud, so I wanted to know just how FIFO the Amazon Simple Queue Service is. Amazon says that the SQS is not FIFO. So I (with hobbs from #catalyst) wrote a script to test the SQS's Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between set order and get order.

The results for 1000 gets/sets to the queue usually look something like this:

SAD: 42.04
Spearman: 0.9835

The data is plotted for 1000 inserts/gets, with a 0 second delay between the finish of get/set here:

So far, a delay between the sets and gets seems to have no effect on FIFO-ness, but the rate of sets may.

The results? Its pretty FIFO. Not completely ordered, but its in a distributed cloud so that would be quite hard.

How much did the tests cost me?

29,021 Requests: $0.03
0.000035 GB In: $0.01
0.000023 GB Out: $0.01
----------------------
Total Cost: $0.05

How FIFO is Amazon's SQS? - Pretty FIFO

The 2008 GTISC Security Summit on Emerging Cyber Security Threats is the sixth security summit hosted at Georgia Tech since 2004. The summits began as an effort to engage the broader community in the Atlanta area and at the national level to better understand the threats to digital information and to develop strategies for securing it. The summits bring together thought leaders in the information technology and security fields to explore key cyber security threats and ways for countering them. The GTISC annual security summit has evolved into one of the most forward looking cyber security events with a focus on emerging threats that you and your company should be prepared to recognize and respond. This is not a product focused meeting. Instead, more than 250 attendees from academia, government and industry gather to discuss emerging cyber threats and explore potential solutions.

Past GTISC Security Summits have addressed issues in VoIP security, identity management, wireless security and role of regulation in addressing threats like email spam. This year, our keynote speaker and panelists will look ahead to discuss and debate threats and vulnerabilities that will emerge or become serious problems over the next few years. The 2008 GTISC Security Summit on Emerging Cyber Security Threats will also mark the second issuance of the annual GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for the year ahead – read last year’s report.

2008 GTISC Security Summit: Emerging Cyber Security Threats

The Business Case For Rich Internet Applications
Simple Models Show The Business Value Of RIAs
by Ron Rogowski
with Harley Manning, Megan Burns, Jeffrey Hammond, Henry H. Harteveldt, and Steven Geller

PDF makes the use case for rich internet apps.

Forrester_RRogowski_BusCase_for_RIAs3_07.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The following script can be used to allow visitors to increase or decrease the size of text on your page. This can be useful for visitors who have trouble reading smaller text and allows them to increase it to something they can view more easily.
Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size

This script will change the font size of any text within a paragraph ( tag). If you wish to change text within other tags edit the getElementsByTagName('p'); part.

In order for this code to work your page must be using pixel sized fonts (px) rather than relative sized fonts using 'em' or '%'. Of course if you do use other font units the code can be easily adapted for these. If the script cannot find the font size of a paragraph it will default it to 12px.

Controlling Font Size With Javascript

Attention: Start-Ups and Entrepreneurs! Do you have a great idea or an existing application that is built on AWS?

With the 2008 AWS Start-Up Challenge, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is searching for the next hot start-up that is leveraging AWS to build its infrastructure and business. The grand prize is $100,000 in cash and AWS credits and a potential investment offer from Amazon.

Tell Us About It

To enter, complete the online application by October 3, 2008. The judges panel will review all applications and choose five finalists based on the following criteria: originality and creativity of the idea, likelihood of long-term success, how well it addresses a need in the marketplace, and implementation of AWS' infrastructure services and/or other paid services.

In October, the finalists will be announced and we will post a video of each finalist on aws.amazon.com where the community can vote for their favorite start-up.

The Final Countdown

For the Final Round, AWS will fly the finalists to Amazon Headquarters in Seattle to present their idea to the judges' panel. The finalists will also pitch their business ideas to VCs, meet with industry leaders and Amazon executives, and be featured at the AWS Start-Up event, where the grand prize winner will be announced.

Reap the Rewards

The grand prize includes $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in AWS service credits, a potential investment offer from Amazon, AWS Premium Support for two years, and mentoring sessions from an AWS executive. All finalists will be included in various promotional activities.

Plus, all contestants with qualified entries will receive $25 credit for Amazon Web Services.

AWS Contest - Amazon Web Services @ Amazon.com

You don't break-even till the four-and-a-half year mark, but here's a bigger problem--there's no guarantee that that customer is still going to be yours in four years' time.

Getting signed up as a SaaS customer is fast, but getting out is just as fast. Whereas traditional software is like cocaine--you're hooked. It's too difficult and expensive to switch providers once you've invested in one. If it were easier to jump ship, a lot of people would've hit the eject button on SAP a long time ago.

So is Lawson is looking to lock people in, this same way?

Yes. Yes, they are.

SaaS market will 'collapse' in two years | Tech News on ZDNet