The KIT ─ Knowledge & Information Technology
No. 161 - 1 February 2016
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In This Issue
Grady Booch webinar
Migrating Applications to the Public Cloud
Dronecode
US Data Privacy
Fog Computing (reader comment)
Alphabet Masters Go
Seen Recently
Claude Baudoin

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Grady Booch on "Computational Thinking"
ACM presents a free webinar by Grady Booch, ACM Fellow and Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM, and one of the pioneers of object-oriented design in the 1990s, on Wednesday, February 3rd at noon (Eastern US time). Register here.
Migrating Applications to Public Cloud Services
On Wednesday, February 17, at noon Eastern US time, the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) will present a complimentary BrightTALK webcast on "Migrating Applications to Public Cloud Services: Roadmap for Success". The talk will be based on the CSCC's white paper on the same subject, initially published at the end of 2013. Register here.
Open Source Software for Drones
Dronecode is an open-source effort developed by a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project that now includes 51 members. The components of the project include a real-time operating system and drivers. Two "flight codes" are available, one under the GPL license and the other under the BSD one.
US Data Privacy and Safe Harbor Issues
This Information Week article from January 6, catchingly titled "Top Data Privacy Issues to Scare You in 2016," is a fairly comprehensive review of the difficulties faced by data custodians in the U.S. after the European Court of Justice ruling against the "safe harbor" provisions previously recognized. The article also covers the debate between the US government and IT companies about encryption and the provision of "back doors" to allow access to private data by law enforcement agencies.
Reader Comment on Fog Computing
Guillaume Tamboise reacted to the last issue's article on fog computing, and especially our claim that "the reason for the revival [of a grid computing-like architecture] is the proliferation of devices ... and the ensuing risk of network congestion."

Guillaume writes that "much of the value of IoT comes from distributed sensing, actuating and computing capabilities. Cloud vendors pretend to see IoT devices as things [and] the cloud is there to answer all their computing needs... IoT should not be defined by cloud vendors." Guillaume illustrates his point with the impact of device intelligence in how seismic surveys can be improved.

Guillaume concludes that "we should constantly go for sensors that are as smart as technology allows, not for solving network congestion. The end goal is a robust system architecture where data is ingested close to its source and data streams are merged as early as possible."
Alphabet Masters Go
News of artificial intelligence successes are few and far in between, even if we have gotten used to Siri telling us answers to our questions and we have watched IBM's Watson bear a "Jeopardy" champion. But on January 27, it was reported (see this New York Times article) that the DeepMind program, from the Alphabet company (the new Google ecosystem), beat a champion in the game of Go. Go has higher complexity than chess and was considered the next big challenge for AI software.
Seen Recently...
"The collaborative economy sets the stage for autonomous innovation."
--Jeremiah Owyang in his blog

"Companies feel better about their ability for IoT initiatives than information security or big data practices."
-- Mike Kavis, who posted this on Twitter( @madgreek65)
with the additional comment "Cart before horse"