Facebook Shatters the Computer Server Into Tiny Pieces

MENLO PARK, California — Since you last saw Frank Frankovsky, his beard has grown to epic lengths. And it suits him.

As the man at the center of Facebook’s Open Compute Project, Frankovsky spent the last two years rethinking the very essence of the computer hardware that runs the company’s massive social network — and sharing his ever-evolving data center ideology with the rest of the tech world. He’s a kind of hardware philosopher. And now he looks like one too.

When you sit down with the burly Texan, inside Facebook’s Northern California headquarters, he takes the Open Compute philosophy to new extremes, revealing the blueprint for a computer server that doesn’t even look like a computer server. This design lets you add or remove a server’s primary part — the processor — whenever you like. Nowadays, if you want a new processor, you need, well, a new server. But Frankovksy and the Open Compute Project aim to change that, sharing the new design with anyone who wants it.

“By modularizing the design, you can rip and place the bits that need to be upgraded, but you can leave the stuff that’s still good,” Frankovsky says, pointing to memory and flash storage as hardware that you don’t have to replace as often as the processor. “Plus, you can better match your hardware to the software that it’s going to run.”

The new design is still a long way from live data centers. At this point, it’s just a specification for a motherboard slot that processors will plug into. But Intel and AMD — the two largest server chip designers — have put their weight behind the idea, as have two companies working to build servers using low-power ARM processors akin to the one in your iPhone: Calxeda and AppliedMicro.

‘By modularizing the design, you can rip and place the bits that need to be upgraded, but you can leave the stuff that’s still good.’

— Frank Frankovsky

It’s one more way the Open Compute Project seeks to significantly reduce the cost and the hassle of the hardware that underpins today’s online operations. Facebook and Frankovsky founded the project in the spring of 2011, urging companies across the industry to share and collaborate on new data-center hardware designs, and though Facebook is still the primary force behind the project, Open Compute has now been spun off as a not-for-profit operation — with its own full-time employee — and it’s backed by a wide range of companies, including hardware buyers such as Rackspace, Goldman Sachs, and Fidelity as well as hardware makers and sellers such as Intel, AMD, and Dell.

At first glance, some may seem out of place. Dell is a participant even though the project’s open source design threaten to cut into its traditional server business — Facebook’s servers are built by lesser-known manufacturers in Asia — and in backing the project’s modular processor idea, Intel is giving buyers a way to readily replace their Intel chips with processors from AMD and countless outfits backing the ARM architecture. But this can only be a sign of how important the project has become. And Frankovsky says there’s no point in trying to parse the industry politics.

“The tend to ignore the politics. Nobody should take sides over technology. Everyone should test, see what works best for them, and choose that. There shouldn’t be any other motivation other than what delivers the best results for the infrastructure,” Frankovsky says. “[The Open Compute Project] is about empowering the user to take control of infrastructure design.”

Due for a formal unveiling on Wednesday, when Open Compute members meet in Santa Clara, California, for their latest summit, the modular processor spec is a natural extension of earlier hardware design “open sourced” by Facebook. In May, at the previous summit, Frankovsky unveiled a new breed of server rack capable of holding its own power supplies, which meant you could separate the power supply from the servers housed in the rack. “You don’t have to embed a new power supply every time you install a new CPU,” Frankovsky said then.

Now, the Facebook and others have also separated the processor from the server. Basically, Facebook has offered up the spec for the motherboard slot that processors can plug in to, and four companies — Intel, AMD, AppliedMicro, and Calxeda — have already built preliminary hardware that uses this spec. As Facebook man John Kenevey demonstrates, just before Wednesday’s Open Compute summit, the setup even allows to two different processors from two different manufacturers to operate on the same motherboard.

“It’s always frustrated me — for years — that we’ve had to design two separate motherboards: one for Intel [processor] sockets and one for AMD sockets,” says Frankovsky, who worked at Dell for 14 years before moving to Facebook. “But now any [processor] maker in the world can design to this new specification. It will be the great equalizer.” The common slot used by these processors — or SoCs, systems on a chip — is based on the PCIe connector used in today’s servers.

At the same time, Intel has released the specifications for a 100-Gigabit silicon phonics bus that will sit in the rack and connect these modular servers connect to networking switches, the devices that tie your servers to a larger network of machines. In short, the project is working to split servers into a many pieces as possible — all of which you can install or remove with relative ease.

“Historically, the industry has built very monolithic servers. Everything got put onto a motherboard. The motherboard got put into a chassis. The chassis got put into a rack. And the chassis got connected to a switch,” Frankovsky says. “We want to better match how the software is going to exercise the hardware. We want to dis-aggregate the hardware components so you can better take advantage of each component.”

As this effort continues to gestate, Facebook has also open sourced two other new server designs. One is the latest version of the Facebook web server — a machine that delivers webpages — and the other is the company’s first custom-built database server. Both are meant to reduce costs by stripping the hardware to the bare essentials, but the database goes a step further. It doesn’t use a hard drive. It runs entirely on flash memory, the superfast solid-state storage medium that gradually replacing the hard drive across the industry.

Codenamed “Dragonstone,” the Facebook database is designed for use with a new 3.2-terabyte flash memory card from Silicon Valley outfit Fusion-io. According to Frankovsky and Fusion-io CEO David Flynn, the card was designed in tandem with Facebook engineers — Facebook wanted all storage space on a single card — but it’s now available to the rest of the world as well. Plugging into a PCIe connector, this sort of flash card provides an added level of performance, but it’s also more reliable than a mechanical hard drive, which, in Frankovsky’s words, breaks down more often than any other device in the data center. The new server even boots from the flash card.

These servers were built specifically for Facebook’s data centers. The Dragonstone database machine is slated for use in the company’s new facility in Lulea, Sweden. But in sharing the designs with the world at large, Facebook hopes that others can use them too — or at least re-purpose parts of them in machines tailored to different tasks.

It seems like such an idealistic endeavor. But it’s working. Inspired by Facebook, Texas-based cloud computing outfit Rackspace was due to unveil its own server designs on Wednesday, following in the footsteps of AMD and Intel, which have designed boards in tandem with financial houses like Fidelity and Goldman Sachs. And it was Intel was designed the modular processor prototype set to be flaunted at the summit, allowing, yes, its x86 processors to run alongside an ARM design from AppliedMicro.

The man with the beard is worth listening to.

Read More..

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, but can he flex Box-Office muscle?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Arnold Schwarzenegger is back at the box office, but will anyone notice? We’ll find out on Friday, when he debuts as a kick-ass small-town sheriff in “The Last Stand,’ his first starring role in nine years.

When Schwarzenegger famously delivered his “I’ll be back” line in 1984, it was as a time-traveling android in “The Terminator.” Following his stint as California governor and a very messy divorce from Maria Shriver complete with love child, his return as a box-office force seems almost as unlikely as his role as a time-traveling android.

But Hollywood has embraced the return of California’s 65-year-old former “Governator.” He has three films coming out in the next 12 months and Universal is developing “Triplets,” a sequel to the Danny DeVito-Schwarzenegger comedy “Twins,” as well as another “Conan the Barbarian” movie.

But whether the movie going public is as excited as Hollywood about Arnold‘s return is an open question.

Lionsgate is distributing “The Last Stand,” an action film with a reported $ 50 million budget.

Directed by Korean director Kim Jee-woon and written by Andrew Knauer and Jeffrey Nachmanoff, “The Last Stand” is the tale of an aging border-town lawman drawn into a showdown with a drug cartel kingpin. Johnny Knoxville, Forrest Whitaker and Eduardo Noriega co-star. It was produced by Leonardo Di Bonaventura and was acquired by Lionsgate back in 2009 before Schwarzenegger was involved. Liam Neeson was attached to star at one point.

Lionsgate has proven adept at marketing genre films, including “The Expendables” and Tyler Perry franchises, and last year’s “The Possession,” and that will help “The Last Stand.” Distribution chief Richie Fay tells TheWrap he’s confident Schwarzenegger‘s return will connect with the public.

“I’ve been in a number of screenings and at the premiere,” Fay told TheWrap Tuesday, “and the reaction to the film has been great. People are laughing at his one-liners, they seem very comfortable with Arnold back on the screen in his action mode.”

Fay has reason to be bullish. Schwarzenegger‘s most recent screen appearance was in another Lionsgate entry, the ensemble action film “The Expendables 2,” last August. That one has taken in more than $ 300 million worldwide. And he’ll be back – there we go, again – with Sylvester Stallone in “The Tomb,” for Lionsgate‘s Summit Entertainment in September.

Others aren’t so sure.

“I can’t see this film opening to more than the mid-teen millions,” Exhibitor Relations senior analyst Jeff Bock told TheWrap. “There’s not a lot of negative buzz, but people aren’t dying to see him come back, either. Bottom line, I don’t think he’ll inspire anywhere the level of passion he once did at the box office.”

If Lionsgate is to make money on “The Last Stand,” it appears foreign will be critical; analysts see the film topping out at $ 30 million domestically.

“Schwarzenegger is still a big deal overseas,” Bock said, “and that’s where this movie will make or break itself.

I could easily see it doing double whatever it does in the U.S.”

At this point in his career, the stakes for Schwarzenegger may be higher than they are for the studios. His paycheck for “The Last Stand” is reportedly in the $ 8 million to $ 10 million range, with some potential profit participation. That’s about half of what he commanded in his heyday for the “Terminator” films, “True Lies” and “Total Recall.”

Schwarzenegger‘s box-office clout was beginning to fade prior to his heading to Sacramento in 2003. His last film, “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” made $ 150 million domestically for Warner Bros. in 2003, but his two previous movies, “Collateral Damage” and “The Sixth Day,” topped out at $ 40 million and $ 34 million respectively.

Hollywood’s expectations have changed, too. Most of Schwarzenegger‘s hits were big summer movies, with budgets well over $ 100 million. “The Last Stand” cost half that, and its release on a moderate 2,800 screens in January, typically a soft time for new releases, is no accident. “Ten,” Schwarzenegger‘s third film, is scheduled for release on January 24, 2014, by Open Road Films.

“The Last Stand” is the first of three upcoming openings for action movies with older stars. Warner Bros. is opening “Bullet to the Head,” starring Stallone, on February 1. Bruce Willis stars in “A Good Day to Die Hard” from Fox on February 15.

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, but can he flex Box-Office muscle?
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-is-back-but-can-he-flex-box-office-muscle/
Link To Post : Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, but can he flex Box-Office muscle?
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

The New Old Age: In Flu Season,Use a Mask. But Which One?

Face masks help prevent people from getting the flu. But how much protection do they provide?

You might think the answer to this question would be well established. It’s not.

In fact, there is considerable uncertainty over how well face masks guard against influenza when people use them outside of hospitals and other health care settings. This has been a topic of discussion and debate in infectious disease circles since the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, also known as swine flu.

As the government noted in a document that provides guidance on the issue, “Very little information is available about the effectiveness of facemasks and respirators in controlling the spread of pandemic influenza in community settings.” This is also true of seasonal influenza — the kind that strikes every winter and that we are experiencing now, experts said.

Let’s jump to the bottom line for older people and caregivers before getting into the details. If someone is ill with the flu, coughing and sneezing and living with others, say an older spouse who is a bit frail, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the use of a face mask “if available and tolerable” or a tissue to cover the nose and mouth.

If you are healthy and serving as a caregiver for someone who has the flu — say, an older person who is ill and at home — the C.D.C. recommends using a face mask or a respirator. (I’ll explain the difference between those items in just a bit.) But if you are a household member who is not in close contact with the sick person, keep at a distance and there is no need to use a face mask or respirator, the C.D.C. advises.

The recommendations are included in another document related to pandemic influenza — a flu caused by a new virus that circulates widely and ends up going global because people lack immunity. That is not a threat this year, but the H3N2 virus that is circulating widely is hitting many older adults especially hard. So the precautions are a good idea, even outside a pandemic situation, said Dr. Ed Septimus, a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

The key idea here is exposure, Dr. Septimus said. If you are a caregiver and intimately exposed to someone who is coughing, sneezing and has the flu, wearing a mask probably makes sense — as it does if you are the person with the flu doing the coughing and sneezing and a caregiver is nearby.

But the scientific evidence about how influenza is transmitted is not as strong as experts would like, said Dr. Carolyn Bridges, associate director of adult immunization at the C.D.C. It is generally accepted that the flu virus is transmitted through direct contact — when someone who is ill touches his or her nose and then a glass that he or she hands to someone else, for instance — and through large droplets that go flying through the air when a person coughs or sneezes. What is not known is the extent to which tiny aerosol particles are implicated in transmission.

Evidence suggests that these tiny particles may play a more important part than previously suspected. For example, a November 2010 study in the journal PLoS One found that 81 percent of flu patients sent viral material through air expelled by coughs, and 65 percent of the virus consisted of small particles that can be inhaled and lodge deeper in the lungs than large droplets.

That is a relevant finding when it comes to masks, which cover much of the face below the eyes but not tightly, letting air in through gaps around the nose and mouth. As the C.D.C.’s advisory noted, “Facemasks help stop droplets from being spread by the person wearing them. They also keep splashes or sprays from reaching the mouth and nose of the person wearing them. They are not designed to protect against breathing in the very small particle aerosols that may contain viruses.”

In other words, you will get some protection, but it is not clear how much. In most circumstances, “if you’re caring for a family member with influenza, I think a surgical mask is perfectly adequate,” said Dr. Carol McLay, an infection control consultant based in Lexington, Ky.

By contrast, respirators fit tightly over someone’s face and are made of materials that filter out small particles that carry the influenza virus. They are recommended for health care workers who are in intimate contact with patients and who have to perform activities like suctioning their lungs. So-called N95 respirators block at least 95 percent of small particles in tests, if properly fitted.

Training in how to use respirators is mandated in hospitals, but no such requirement applies outside, and consumers frequently put them on improperly. One study of respirator use in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when mold was a problem, found that only 24 percent of users put them on the right way. Also, it can be hard to breathe when respirators are used, and this can affect people’s willingness to use them as recommended.

Unfortunately, research about the relative effectiveness of masks and respirators is not robust, and there is no guidance backed by scientific evidence available for consumers, Dr. Bridges said. Nor is there any clear way of assessing the relative merits of various products being sold to the public, which differ in design and materials used.

“Honestly, some of the ones I’ve seen are almost like a paper towel with straps,” Dr. McLay said. Her advice: go with name-brand items used by your local hospital.

Meanwhile, it is worth repeating: The single most important thing that older people and caregivers can do to prevent the flu is to be vaccinated, Dr. Bridges said. “It’s the best tool we have,” she said, noting that preventing flu also involves vigilant hand washing, using tissues or arms to block sneezing, and staying home when ill so people do not transmit the virus. And it is by no means too late to get a shot, whose cost Medicare will cover for older adults.

Read More..

Bits Blog: Facebook Unveils a New Search Tool

8:53 p.m. | Updated

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook has spent eight years nudging its users to share everything they like and everything they do. Now, the company is betting it has enough data so that people can find whatever they want on Facebook. And on Tuesday, it unveiled a new tool to help them dig for it.

The tool, which the company calls graph search, is Facebook’s most ambitious stab at overturning the Web search business ruled by its chief rival, Google. It is also an effort to elbow aside other Web services designed to unearth specific kinds of information, like LinkedIn for jobs, Match for dates and Yelp for restaurants.

Facebook has spent over a year honing graph search, said Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, at an event here at Facebook’s headquarters introducing the new product. He said it would enable Facebook users to search their social network for people, places, photos and things that interest them.

That might include, Mr. Zuckerberg offered, Mexican restaurants in Palo Alto that his friends have “liked” on Facebook or checked into. It might be used to find a date, dentist or job, other Facebook executives said.

“Graph search,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, “is a completely new way to get information on Facebook.”

Graph search will be immediately available to a limited number of Facebook users — in the “thousands,” Mr. Zuckerberg said — and gradually extended to the rest.

Every Internet platform company has been interested in conquering search.

But Facebook search differs from other search services because of the mountain of social data the company has collected over the years. It knows which parks your friends like to take their children to, or which pubs they like to visit, and who among their network is single and lives nearby.

The company is betting that its users are more eager to hear their friends’ recommendations for a restaurant than advice from a professional food critic or from a stranger on Yelp.

Its search tool is based on the premise that the data within Facebook is enough and that its users will have little reason to venture outside its blue walled garden. What they cannot find inside the garden, its search partner, Bing, a Microsoft product, will help them find on the Web.

For now, the Facebook tool will mine its users’ pictures, likes and check-ins, but not their status updates. Graph search, Mr. Zuckerberg explained, is aimed at answering questions based on the data contained in your social network, not serving you a list of links to other Web sites.

Say, for example, you are searching for a grocery store in Manhattan. You would type that question into a box on your Facebook page and the results would show stores your friends liked or where they had checked in.

It remains unclear how users will react to having others mine the data they share on Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg took pains to reassure users that what they post would be found only if they wanted it to be found. Before the new search tool is available to them, he said, users will see this message: “Please take some time to review who can see your stuff.” Facebook tweaked its privacy controls last December.

Mr. Zuckerberg said Tuesday that initially, photos posted on Instagram, which Facebook owns, would not be part of the database of photos that can be searched. Nor would he specify how soon graph search would be available to those who log in using the Facebook app on their cellphones.

The search tool is plainly designed with an eye toward profits. If done right, said Brian Blau, an analyst with Gartner, it could offer marketers a more precise signal of a Web user’s interests. “It’s going to lend itself to advertising or other revenue-generating products that better matches what people are looking for,” he said. “Advertisers are going to be able to better target what you’re interested in. It’s a much more meaningful search than keyword search.”

News of the new search tool offered a modest lift to Facebook shares, which rose 2.7 percent to a close at $30.10 Tuesday. Google remained stable, with a share price of nearly $725. Google retains two-thirds of the search market, and Facebook’s search tool by itself is not likely to affect Google’s business.

Still, introduction of graph search sharpens the divide between Facebook and Google.

“If Facebook can truly provide relevant answers based on mining data from the social graph, it has an advantage,” said Venkat N. Venkatraman, a business professor at Boston University.

Google has been scrambling for several years to collect social data and incorporate it into search results, as Web users increasingly turn to social networks to seek friends’ recommendations.

It introduced Google Plus, its Facebook rival, in 2011, and from the beginning said its main purpose was to use social information to improve and personalize all Google products, from search to maps to ads. Last year, Google began showing posts, photos, profiles and conversations from Google Plus in Google search results. A search for restaurants in Seattle, for instance, could show posts and photos shared by friends in addition to links from around the Web. Google declined to comment for this article.

The kind of personal search that Facebook is promising is rife with potential privacy hazards, which Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged repeatedly. “The search we wanted to build is privacy aware,” he maintained. “On Facebook, most of the things people share with you isn’t public.”

The American Civil Liberties Union immediately posted a warning, reminding Facebook users to review their privacy settings. It pointed out that advertisers who, until now, could target only certain categories of people anonymously — “users under 35 who live in Texas,” for instance — could now find specific users under 35 who live in Texas, if their privacy settings allowed them to be found. It cautioned that “controlling your personal data means controlling not only who can see your information but how it can be found and what can be done with it.”

But Facebook pointed out that even though a business owner could personally search for specific personal data, a brand page could not. Detailed searching of Facebook data for the sake of sending promotional messages would violate the site’s internal policies.

The search team was led by two former Google engineers, Lars Rasmussen and Tom Stocky. As they explained in a blog post on the Facebook Engineering Department page, graph search solves a problem of Facebook’s own making: it has collected so much information.

“As people shared more and more content, we saw that we needed to give them better ways to explore and enjoy those stories and memories,” they wrote.

Read More..

5 Freeway reopens after big-rig accident

By Nicole Santa Cruz

January 15, 2013, 8:08 a.m.

All lanes of the 5 Freeway near Elysian Park were reopened Tuesday morning after a big rig hit the center divider and caught fire, backing up traffic for miles during the early commute.

Authorities reopened the freeway shortly after 7:30 a.m., said Officer Monica Posada of the California Highway Patrol.

Traffic delays are still expected in the area around Fletcher Drive on the southbound side and Stadium Way on the northbound side.

The closure was prompted at 3:16 a.m. when the big rig crashed into the center divider. No injuries were reported in the accident.

Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.

';
shareDiv.innerHTML = templateHTML;

/* append the new div to the end of the document, which is hidden already with CSS */
document.body.appendChild(shareDiv);

/* Store the div in both a regular JavaScript variable and as a jQuery object so we can reference them faster later */
var shareTip = document.getElementById('shareTip'),
$shareTip = $('#shareTip');

/* This extends our settings object with any user-defined settings passed to the function and returns the jQuery object shareTip
was called on */
return this.each(function() {
if (options) {
$.extend(settings, options);
}

/* This is a hack to make sure the shareTip always fades back to 100% opacity */
var checkOpacity = function (){
if ( $shareTip.css('opacity') !== 1 ){
$shareTip.css({'opacity': 1});
}
};

/* Function that replaces the HTML in the shareTip with the template we defined at the top */
/* It will wipe/reset the links on the social media buttons each time the function is called */
var removeLinks = function (){
shareTip.innerHTML = templateHTML;
};

/* This is the function that makes the links for the Tweet / Share functionality */

var makeURLS = function (link, message){
/* Here we construct the Tweet URL using an array, with values passed to the function */
var tweetConstruct = [
'http://twitter.com/share?url=', link, '&text=', message, '&via=', settings.twitter_account
],
/* Then join the array into one chunk of HTML */
tweetURL = tweetConstruct.join(''),

/* Same story for Facebook */
fbConstruct = [
'http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=', link, '&src=sp'
],

fbURL = fbConstruct.join(''),

newHTML = [
''
],
shareHTML = newHTML.join('');
/* Load in our new HTML */
shareTip.innerHTML = shareHTML;
};

/* Since the shareTip will automatically fade out when the user mouses out of an element */
/* we have to specifically tell the shareTip we want it to stay put when the user mouses over it */
/* This effectively gives the user a 500 ms (or whatever) window to mouse */
/* from the element to the shareTip to prevent it from popping out */
$shareTip.hover(function(){
$shareTip.stop(true, true);
$shareTip.show();
checkOpacity();
}, function(){
$(this).fadeOut(settings.speed);
});

/* This function handles the hover action */
$(this).hover(function(){
/* remove the old links, so someone doesn't accidentally click on them */
removeLinks();

/* If there's already an animation running on the shareTip, stop it */
$shareTip.stop(true, true);

var eso = $(this),
message,
/* Store the width and height of the shareTip and the offset of the element for our calculations */
height = eso.height(),
width = eso.width(),
offset = eso.offset(),
link;


link = eso.children('a').attr('href');
message = escape( eso.find('img').attr('alt') ) || eso.attr(settings.message_attr);

if (link.search('http://') === -1){
link = 'http://www.latimes.com' + link;
}
link = encodeURIComponent(link);

/* If it's at the top of the page, the shareTip will pop under the element */
if (offset.top

Read More..

Facebook's Bold, Compelling and Scary Engine of Discovery: The Inside Story of Graph Search

Beast had a birthday last week. The First Dog of social networking — live-in companion to Mark Zuckerberg and his bride, Priscilla Chan — turned two. The proud owners baked a cake for the Hungarian sheepdog and decided to throw an impromptu party. Naturally, when it came time to compile the guest list, the couple turned to Facebook, the $67 billion dollar company that Zuckerberg founded in his dorm room nine years ago.

To date, sorting through your Facebook friends can be a frustrating task. Although the site has a search bar, there has been no easy way to quickly cull contacts based on specific criteria. But Zuckerberg was testing a major new feature that Facebook would announce on Jan. 15 — one that promises to transform its user experience, threaten its competitors, and torment privacy activists. It’s called Graph Search, and it will eventually allow a billion people to dive into the vast trove of stored information about them and their network of friends. In Zuckerberg’s case, it allowed him to type “Friends of Priscilla and me who live around Palo Alto” and promptly receive a list of potential celebrants. “We invited five people over who were obvious dog lovers,” he says.

For years now, Facebook watchers have wondered when the company would unleash the potential of its underpowered search bar. (Nobody has feared this day more than Google, which suddenly faces a competitor able to index tons of data that Google’s own search engine can’t access.) They have also wondered how a Facebook search product might work. Now we know. Graph Search is fundamentally different from web search. Instead of a Google-like effort to help users find answers from a stitched-together corpus of all the world’s information, Facebook is helping them tap its vast, monolithic database to make better use of their “social graph,” the term Zuckerberg uses to describe the network of one’s relationships with friends, acquaintances, favorite celebrities, and preferred brands.

In the weeks leading up to the launch, Facebook executives were still trying to come up with a name for the new product. They were hoping to stay away from the word search, to distinguish it from web search. (Only a few days before the launch, one Facebook executive slipped and referred to it as “browse.”) But after hours of contortionism, they relented; nothing topped Graph Search. “It’s descriptive — it’s search,” Zuckerberg says. “And the graph is a big thing.” The idea is that Facebook’s new offering will be able to extract meaning from the social graph in much the same way that Google’s original search unearthed the hidden treasures of the web. “People use search engines to answer questions,” Zuckerberg says. “But we can answer a set of questions that no one else can really answer. All those other services are indexing primarily public information, and stuff in Facebook isn’t out there in the world — it’s stuff that people share. There’s no real way to cut through the contents of what people are sharing, to fulfill big human needs about discovery, to find people you wouldn’t otherwise be connected with. And we thought we should do something about that. We’re the only service in the world that can do that.”

The result is surprisingly compelling. The mark of a transformative product is that it gets you to do more of something that you wouldn’t think to do on your own. Thanks to Graph Search, people will almost certainly use Facebook in entirely new ways: to seek out dates, recruit for job openings, find buddies to go out with on short notice, and look for new restaurants and other businesses. Most strikingly, it expands Facebook’s core mission — not just obsessively connecting users with people they already know, but becoming a vehicle of discovery.

Zuckerberg says that this is in fact a return to the company’s roots. “When I first made Facebook, we actually offered some functionality that was like this but only for your college,” he says. “Facebook then was arguably as much for meeting new people around you and exploring your community as it was for keeping in touch with the people you already knew. But it was such a hard problem to do it for more than a few thousand people at a time. We transitioned from connecting with whoever you wanted to primarily staying with people you already knew. But Graph Search is like the grown-up version of that discovery aspect. Exploring your community is a core human need, and this is the first big step we’re taking in that direction.”

The first of many steps, that is. Graph Search will be improved based on how people actually use it. So Facebook plans a slow introduction, limiting the initial rollout to a small number of users. Zuckerberg’s expectation is that by the time it becomes available to millions it will be considerably improved.

For example, he thinks he can make it easier to find invitees for a canine birthday party. “We don’t have the ‘who has dogs’ field yet,” Zuckerberg says.

Read More..

Poet Sharon Olds wins T.S. Eliot award

LONDON (Reuters) – American poet Sharon Olds won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry on Monday for “Stag’s Leap”, a critically acclaimed collection that traces the end of her marriage 15 years ago.

The annual award, celebrating its 20th anniversary, goes to what a panel of poets decides is the best collection of verse published in the United Kingdom and Ireland each year, and is considered to be one of the world’s top poetry prizes.

Stag’s Leap, published in Britain by Jonathan Cape, was chosen from a record 131 submissions and a shortlist of 10.

“From over 130 collections, we were particularly impressed by the strong presence of women on the list and were unanimous in awarding the 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize to Sharon Olds‘ Stag’s Leap,” said Carol Ann Duffy, chair of the judges.

Duffy, also Britain’s poet laureate since 2009, called the work “a tremendous book of grace and gallantry which crowns the career of a world-class poet.”

Olds wins a cheque for 15,000 pounds ($ 24,000) for the prize, which is administered by the Poetry Book Society and supported by the estate of leading 20th century poet T.S. Eliot whose works include “The Waste Land”.

When her marriage ended, Olds, now 70, promised her children she would not write about the divorce for 10 years. In fact, it took her 15 years to get around to publishing a collection which some critics said was her best yet.

“Olds, who has always had a gift for describing intimacy, has, in a sense, had these poems thrown at her by life and allowed them to take root: they are stunning – the best of a formidable career,” wrote Kate Kellaway in The Observer.

The critic added that the collection was surprisingly kind considering its subject matter.

In “Unspeakable”, from Stag’s Leap, Olds writes:

“He shows no anger,/I show no anger but in flashes of humor/all is courtesy and horror. And after/the first minute, when I say, Is this about/her, and he says, No, it’s about/you, we do not speak of her.”

Olds was born in San Francisco in 1942 and her first collection of poems, “Satan Says” (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award.

She went on to win a string of other prizes and currently teaches creative writing at New York University.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Poet Sharon Olds wins T.S. Eliot award
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/poet-sharon-olds-wins-t-s-eliot-award/
Link To Post : Poet Sharon Olds wins T.S. Eliot award
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

DealBook: JPMorgan Board Votes to Release 'London Whale' Report

The board of JPMorgan Chase voted Tuesday to release an internal report detailing the bad bet — and related management missteps — that cost the nation’s largest bank more than $6 billion, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Since announcing the trading losses in May, JPMorgan Chase has worked to move beyond the fiasco, shuffling senior management, clawing back millions of dollars in compensation from senior executives and commissioning the internal investigation. The report, which exceeds 50 pages, is the result of the investigation, led by Mike Cavanagh, JPMorgan’s former chief financial officer.

The losses stemmed from a bungled derivatives bet made by the bank’s Chief Investment Office, which was a little-known unit with offices in London and New York. An aggressive group of traders in London built a large position that distorted the credit market and has prompted $6.2 billion in losses.

Some within the bank were wary of releasing the report, which takes aim at lax supervision and risk controls, according to the people who insisted on anonymity because the discussions were not public. One concern was that plaintiff lawyers might seize on the report, the people said.

But Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, argued that the report should be released. The report is expected to be critical of Douglas Braunstein, formerly the bank’s chief financial officer, for failing to strictly monitor the activities of the traders in London.

Ahead of JPMorgan’s earnings announcement on Wednesday, the board met to discuss whether to make the report public. Also on the agenda is whether to reduce the bonuses of Mr. Dimon and Mr. Braunstein. Mr. Dimon, these people said, could have his annual payout cut by as much as 20 percent.

Among the six largest banks in the United States, Mr. Dimon was the highest-paid chief executive, taking home $23.1 million in 2011. That year, his total pay package was made up of stock and option awards along with a $4.5 million cash bonus.

A spokesman for JPMorgan Chase did not immediately return calls for comment.

Read More..

An Anaheim woman demands respect for her neighborhood

Yesenia Rojas, vibrant in her purple shawl, sang with a voice so powerful it rose above the rest of the procession as they shuffled down the damp Anaheim sidewalk.

"Era mexicana. Era mexicana," they sang with a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe hoisted high, candlelight and street lamps illuminating their way. "Madrecita de los mexicanos."

The singsong serenade lauds the patroness, the mother of all Mexicans.

On this drizzly evening, Rojas led the group down Anna Drive, where she and her family have made their home.

In a city often defined by Disneyland and elegant sports venues, this street of working-class Latino immigrants has become an avatar of a lesser-known, voiceless Anaheim, one riddled with poverty and gangs.

When police shot and killed a 25-year-old alleged gang member who lived on Anna Drive, it stoked what had been a growing fire in the city. It was the latest in a spate of police shootings last year, which inflamed anger with law enforcement into a larger sense of resentment over ethnic and class fissures that divide Orange County's largest city.

Unrest — amplified by Occupy-connected protesters from outside the city — gripped Anaheim for days after the July shooting, followed by weeks of heated City Council meetings.

The wave of protesters demanding change has washed away, but Rojas has emerged in its wake. The 35-year-old mother of six, with short, wavy dark hair and a small frame that belies her force of will, has taken it upon herself to become the voice of Anna Drive.

Her family lives in a one-bedroom apartment just yards from where Manuel Diaz was shot that summer day. Rojas' 14-year-old daughter saw Diaz's body and has been traumatized since. Her mother can't let that go.

"I thought about leaving, and so did my husband, because of the children," she said. "But I said no. Because, first of all, we don't need to fear anyone, not even the police. The biggest thing right now is to stay on our feet and make things happen as a community. If we all leave, things won't change. They'll keep trampling us and humiliating us."

Rojas has a vision for her community that would seem bold if her wishes weren't so simple: She imagines playgrounds and community centers and political representation. But most of all, she sees respect for Anna Drive.

She balances two jobs, but she makes time for her community. She bends the ears of politicians. She organizes rallies encouraging her neighbors to register to vote and head to the polls. She plans events that she hopes will draw together a community that has grown accustomed to seeing itself as the backdrop of news cameras trying to highlight the city's ills.

And on this night, dozens gathered to pray a rosario in the tight courtyard outside her apartment, where the statue of the Virgin rested on an altar of roses and carnations.

As sirens echoed in the distance, the crowd stayed late into the night. They sang, they danced, they sipped cinnamon-spiced coffee.

And they prayed, petitioning the Virgin Mother for peace and for guidance.

"This is the community," Rojas said. "These are the people of Anna Drive."

::

Anna Drive, a collection of squat, modest apartment buildings, horseshoes off of a busy thoroughfare. On any given day, it pulses with life: children whipping down the sidewalk on scooters and skateboards, older boys tussling with one another and nanas and tatas watching it all unfold from chairs in their frontyards.

The street is clogged with cars and the vending truck that always seems to be parked along the same slice of curb, hawking snacks, produce and spices to the families who live on this stretch of tidy apartments and small, fenced-in lawns.

Rojas came to Anna Drive about a year ago, moving her family into the tight but comfortable apartment, its walls lined with family photographs. She was born in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, but she has lived much of her life in the flatlands of Anaheim. Her mother has lived in the same apartment, just a few blocks away, for decades.

Read More..

CAD Designer Transforms <em>Halo</em> Chief Into Bobble Heads

Master Chief from the Halo series is one of the most fearsome computer-generated characters of all time, as well as a popular product license for everything from action figures to desk toys. When Funko licensed characters from the iconic Xbox franchise to make bobble heads, they recruited CAD/3-D printer artist Khurram Alavi to handle the mini-makeover.

Alavi grew up on a steady diet of animated shows and videogames from the ’80s and ’90s and dreamed of becoming a comic book artist. After earning a design degree in Pakistan, he joined a local animation firm where he discovered ZBrush, a powerful CAD package developed for the entertainment industry. “The world of 3-D just opened up to me,” says Alavi. “It was as if I was sketching, but with actual clay. I started using the software and began entering online contests. I won a few and managed to get some gigs with Marvel- and Sega-based characters.”

He went on to model characters from Star Wars and completed projects for Valve Software, but the Halo bobble head project proved to be more difficult to manage than an evil mutant or fearsome Street Fighter because it had to be cute. “Trust me when I say this — cute and small is not as simple as you may think,” says Alavi. “In fact, it is very challenging as the simplified forms and curvature need to be perfect in every way. I’ve spent days on the simplest of designs just to get the curves right.”

The character and a rough idea for a pose are all Alavi had to work with. “Funko sends over rough ideas for the pose and that’s about it.” says Alavi. “It’s my job to translate it and make it work in 3-D.” Funko also provided the original 3-D models used in Halo 4, but they were of limited use because of the differing requirements in videogames and design for manufacturing. “I could barely use those models as they were made for the game, but they did help speed up with sculpting process.” he says. “I was able to nail the costume elements and details very quickly.”

The model had to capture Masture Chief’s unique look, but was also required to be manufacturable at a low cost, which required great artistry from Alavi. “When you bring more than 40 individual costume elements into the mix, it gets far more complicated,” he says. “Then to make sure that the parts are thick and detailed enough and will be produced properly is another challenge within itself.”

In order to test his models, Alavi turned to 3-D printers and worked with a firm in Hong Kong called Ownage Manufacturing, which specializes in 3-D printing complex ZBrush models. “The approval process is usually very painful, with a lot of back and forth between myself and the licensor,” says Alavi. “They want their designs to be as accurate to the source material as possible, and rightly so. A one-week job can go up to two months sometimes in the collectibles business.”

Fortunately for Alavi, working in pixels has huge benefits over modeling with plasticine clay. “The digital sculpt is very fast in this respect as we can make changes very on the fly and takes less time when compared to making changes to a physical real world sculpture.”

CAD software and 3-D printers have essentially become a “reset” button for the real world.

Photos: Khurram Alavi

Read More..