Microsoft's 'Orleans' cloud programming model gets a Halo test drive
Whenever anyone from Microsoft describes a Microsoft Research
project, there's almost always a disclaimer -- specifically, "There's no
guarantee when and if this technology will ever see the commercial
light of day."
Given that caveat, it's interesting when a Microsoft Research project
takes a step forward. Recently, that seems to have happened with
"Orleans," a cloud-programming model I last blogged about back in 2010.
When perusing the end-of-year research roundups, I found this
interesting tidbit buried in the eXtreme Computing Group's list of
accomplishments for 2012: "The cloud-systems team celebrated a year of successful
deployment of its distributed cloud technology—Orleans—in production for
Microsoft’s Halo team, and the team has scaled its system very
significantly since then."
That's one pretty impressive proof-of-concept demo.
Orleans, as Microsoft officials themselves have described it, "offers
a simple programming model build around grains, a unit of computation
with private and shared state that communicates exclusively by sending
messages to other grains and receiving and replying to requests from
clients. Combined with the Orleans runtime, which provides functionality
commonly used in this type of system, Orleans raises the level of
abstraction and helps developers build scalable correct Cloud
applications."
The (non-fiscal) Cliff Notes version: On the run-time front, Orleans
is to Windows Azure approximately as the Common Language Runtime (CLR)
is to Windows.
As the Microsoft researchers note on their page about Orleans: "Orleans provides direct support for the .NET programming model. We use standard .NET languages with custom attributes (currently C# is supported; we are working on F#)."
Summary:
Remember Microsoft Research's Orleans cloud-programming project? The
Halo team at Microsoft does.There's still no word as to when or how the eXtreme Computing Group
will bring Orleans to market. Will it be internally used infrastructure
only? Or will it be made available to any/all Windows Azure customers
at some point? Stay tuned....
Two vulnerabilities discovered and patched over the summer expose Jenkins servers to mass exploitation. Thousands, if not more, Jenkins servers are vulnerable to data theft, takeover, and cryptocurrency mining attacks. This is because hackers can exploit two vulnerabilities to gain admin rights or log in using invalid credentials on these servers. Both vulnerabilities were discovered by security researchers from CyberArk , were privately reported to the Jenkins team, and received fixes over the summer. But despite patches for both issues, there are still thousands of Jenkins servers available online Jenkins is a web application for continuous integration built in Java that allows development teams to run automated tests and commands on code repositories based on test results, and even automate the process of deploying new code to production servers. Jenkins is a popular component in many companies' IT infrastructure and these servers are very popular with both f...
Summary: The secretive system uses data and other techniques to ferret out cops and root out anyone who may do the service harm. An internal program used by Uber for years to dance around the police in areas where the ride-hailing service was frowned upon has been exposed. In cities such as Boston, Las Vegas, and Paris, alongside countries including China and South Korea, Greyball is used as part of the violation of terms of service (VTOS) program which Uber created in 2014 to ferret out and black-mark anyone that may be a threat to the firm.Dubbed Greyball, Uber's program uses data analytics and a myriad of other tactics to avoid the authorities in places where the service is resisted by law enforcement or banned outright, according to the New York Times . Predominantly used in the US, Greyball first came to light in the same year when investigators began to hail rides using the Uber app to build a case against the company. One such investigator, Erich England from ...
Biometric smartphones to become mainstream in 2014, Ericsson says Summary: Following the release of the fingerprint sensor-enabled iPhone 5s, more smartphone makers could soon jump on the bandwagon, if Ericsson's predictions prove true. By the end of 2014, a wealth of new smartphones could come with biometric technology, such as fingerprint recognition hardware. In September, Apple released the iPhone 5s, which included a fingerprint reader , in the hope of bolstering security and improving usability. And other mobile makers, keen to jump on the biometric bandwagon, could soon embed the technology in their own devices. According to new research by mobile network maker Ericsson, which polled 100,000 people over 40 countries, about 74 percent of respondents said they believe biometric smartphones "will become mainstream" during 2014. More than half at 52 percent want to use their fingerprints instead of a complex alphanumeric combination of letters...
Comments
Post a Comment