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This week we worked on an article for an upcoming May / June, 2015, issue of The Connection magazine – Richard and I chose the title Data ain’t Data – a case for mission-critical data on NonStop. The title came as an analogy to a very successful advertisement campaign when Castrol Oil created the punchline, “Oils ain’t Oils!” See the article to read more about it! The point we were making was that there is some data that is of critical importance; in fact we pointed out that such data could be as mission critical as are some transactions or applications. We also asserted that the source of some of this critically important data could be social media. To illustrate that point I started with: “When you watch news…” and stopped! Who watches news?   Sometimes, when engaging in the mindless activity of applying makeup, I listen to the radio to get the news. So the sentence was intended to show how social media content can be critical data, so important for example to the polic...

We may be familiar with stories from the past including popular movies and publications but has securing private information become too scary? For the NonStop community there are lots of options …. This week another trailer was released for the upcoming end-of-year new Star Wars movie: The Force Awakens. Billed as Episode 7, it follows a pretty uninspiring Episodes 1 through 3 that focused on utilizing new film technologies, including a lot of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) that left many a follower of Star Wars wanting a lot more, and with the release of multiple trailers it looks like Disney, the new owners of the Star Wars franchise, is delivering!   Another image from the most recent trailer features the return of Hans Solo, aka Harrison Ford, and following some scary scenes ends simply with the acknowledgement from Hans Solo, “Chewie, we’re home!” and as a quick glimpse into the future, Star Wars fans are resting easy. However, for anyone in IT the future is l...

As for industry standards, it's been part of the game plan for NonStop to embrace industry standards fully and with NonStop X, HP delivers on this plan ... From the very first time a container ship passed through the heads of Sydney Harbor at the end of 1969 I have been fascinated by the container industry. Spending my formative years of IT working for a container shipping company cemented that fascination and I have been following the industry ever since. So much for the container ships that carried a measly 2000 standard size Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEU as today new-age behemoth ships transport almost ten times this number. What has really sparked my interest all these years later is what’s happening with containers today on dry land, as industries have grown up with novel ways to exploit essentially a standardized “building block”.  According to one news source, the Port of Seville, Spain, is among the more recent converts using seagoing containers in unconventiona...

There’s an article in theguardian.com that reads like a science fiction book or the plot from a Bond movie: “Google has struck a deal with the healthcare company Johnson & Johnson to develop surgical robots that use artificial intelligence. Google’s life sciences division will work with Johnson & Johnson’s medical device company, Ethicon, to create a robotics-assisted surgical platform to help doctors in the operating theatre.” The article then ends with: “Google’s life sciences team is also developing systems that can detect cancer and heart attacks using nano particles, and has worked on smart contact lenses that contain sensors capable of monitoring the signs of diabetes – technology that was licensed by the Swiss drug firm Novartis in July 2014 to develop into a practical medical application.”   The link to this article is here: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/27/google-johnson-and-johnson-artificial-intelligence-surgical-robots There is more...