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ARTICLE AND PHOTOS BY MARCUS SIU Last Wednesday night, Oracle OpenWorld customers were treated to an amazing lineup of music on Treasure Island in San Francisco. Few concerts can match the musical magic of this one, featuring music industry-award winners and rock icons, … Continue reading
The 2011 Oracle Open World Opening Keynotes kicked off with Judith Sim, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer of Oracle, giving some amazing statistics about the company’s annual event. For example, Oracle Open World has built the largest technology conference in the world: 475 exhibiting partners on show fl0or, 400 Oracle demo ground stations, 520,000 square feet of exhibit space, three exhibit show floors, 2,400 sessions, and 1,600 customer speakers.
However, even with those extraordinary numbers from Oracle Open World, the most impressive stats came from CEO, Larry Ellison, as he was presented a World Championship ring from San Francisco Giants’s owner and President, Larry Baer, just before his Opening Keynotes Sunday night. It was well deserved. Ellison remarked to the bewildered audience, “A lot of people are probably a little surprised that I’m getting this ring, but if you were paying attention, you would realize that I did hit .305 last year, and I was 2nd in the voting for he Golden Glove”.
The performance numbers were even more impressive with the Oracle Customer Care studies. Sometimes up to 50X -60X better in performance improvement.
Just like the World Championship San Francisco Giants’ proudly display banners of their All-Stars at AT&T Park, Oracle has done the same this year by putting their super products, “Exadata” and “Exalogic”, and now their latest, the “SPARC SuperCluster”, on busses, billboards and banners that adorn the Moscone Center and are decorated throughout the city.
Last year, at Oracle’s Open World, their banners prominently read “Software Hardware Complete”. This year it reads, “Hardware and Software – Engineered to Work Together”.
“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” remarked Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, after the Sun Microsystems purchase nearly three years ago. “Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”
After returning to the stage after the “ring ceremony”, Ellison explained how Oracle was able to achieve two main goals: to make their hardware faster and cheaper, comparing it against IBM’s fastest computer; the IBM 795.
“Parallel Everything…the idea of engineering the hardware and the software, all of it, so it works together, should give us the opportunity to deliver better performance, and a lower cost, better ease of use, better security, better reliability, across the board, if we engineer all the separate pieces to work together. That’s the whole idea behind “Exadata”, “Exalogic”, and all of these engineered systems”.
In addition, hybrid columnar compression is used.
“If you compress the data, magic things happen . We move 1/10 as much data ten times faster. That means we’re moving from a logical data standpoint, moving data off of storage and into database processors 100X faster.”
Ellison also announced the latest “SPARC SuperCluster”, which also features “Parallel Everything Architecture”. It also has the latest SPARC T4 microprocessor, which is faster for Java compared to the IBM P7, and runs on the latest Solaris 11 operating system, but is also backwards compatible with the Solaris 10.
By the way, the “SPARC SuperCluster” is twice as fast for a quarter of the price.
Lastly, Ellison also unveiled Oracle’s latest engineering system; the “Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine”, which provides instantaneous speed of thought analytics, and a powerful new user interface.
Perhaps, next fall, the Major League Baseball commissioner should come by and pay a visit to the Moscone Center to present Ellison the MVP award for the numbers he put up at this years Opening Keynotes address. They were quite impressive, indeed.
http://medianetwork.oracle.com/media/show/17252?n=subCategory&nid=51
In addition to the opening Keynote with CEO, Larry Ellison, the rest of the week’s keynotes is as follows:
Monday, October 3rd, 8am to 9:45am: Mark Hurd, President of Oracle and Thomas Kurian, Excutive VP, Product Development of Oracle give their Keynote “Extreme Innovation” and Joseph M. Tucci, Chairman, President, and ECO of EMC will give his keynote on “Cloud + Big Data – Massive Change + Massive Opportunity”.
Tuesday, October 4th, 8am to 9:45am: Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell, Inc will give the Dell Keynote, and John Fowler, Excutive VP, Systems and Edward Screvan, Chief Corporate Architect from Oracle will give their keynote, “Engineered Systems”.
Wednesday, October 5th at 8am to 9:45am: Steve Miranda, Senior VP, Applications Development at Oracle will give the keynote, “Oracle Applications: Complete Solutions, Complete Choices”, and John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco, will give his keynote, “Empowering Customers Through Datacenter Transformation. Together we Innovate”.
Wednesday, October 5th at 2:45pm to 4:30: Larry Ellison will make another keynote appearance and speak about “Oracle Cloud Computing”, and S.D. Shibulal, CEO and Managing Director at Infosys will give his keynote, “Accelerating Growth: New Paradigms”.
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PHOTO & SLIDE SHOW CREDITS: MARCUS SIU Whether it was the Forum Keynotes, Technical Sessions, or the Technology Showcase Exhibit Hall representing over 180 different vendors, the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) was a success all around, as it wrapped up another one … Continue reading
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Opening Keynote: Paul Otellini The Evolution of Computing: Looking Ahead September 13 @ 9:00 a.m. PHOTOS BY MARCUS SIU INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 13, 2011 – Intel Corporation today announced a new effort with Google* that aims to … Continue reading
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Intersolar North America, held concurrently with SEMICON West in San Francisco’s Moscone Center West Hall, promotes the development of business opportunities throughout the U.S. solar industry. About 800 exhibitors and 22,000 trade visitors are expected across the more than 130,000 … Continue reading
For fans of the Oakland Athletics and Brad Pitt…
Here’s the trailer for “Moneyball”…opening September 23rd…
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Synopsis
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Brad Pitt stars in the real-life tale of Major League Baseball general manager Billy Beane, who built up a winning team despite a decreased budget thanks to his sly use of statistical data to calculate the best — and cheapest — players for his roster. Aaron Sorkin updates Steve Zaillian’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ fly-on-the-wall novel for Columbia Pictures, with Robin Wright, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman co-starring. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi
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| The MeeGo Conference was hosted by the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. Photo: by Marcus Siu |
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| MeeGo’s Tech Showcase room at the Hyatt Regency. . |
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| Another Tech Showcase room at the Hyatt Regency, featuring Igalia and Qt. |
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| Nomovok launches new Steelrat tablet platform at MeeGo Conference in Hyatt Regency San Francisco, 23.-25.5.2011. Steelrat is a launchpad for MeeGo tablet for companies aiming to create even better MeeGo products. |
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| ICS presents a real world demonstration displaying real-time data from automotive control modules within a Qt Quick based user interface, a new paradigm for design focused user interface development for consumer devices such as mobile phones, media players, netbooks and set-top boxes. . |
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| Party goers let loose at the Exploratorium with food, hosted libations, and the 80’s cover band Tainted Love. |
MeeGo is a Linux-based, open source operating system for small form factor devices. It was created with a unique user experience, designed from the beginning to look great on tablets, handheld devices, in-vehicle infotainment systems, smart TVs, netbooks, and more. MeeGo has a vibrant and active community of developers, enthusiasts, and users. MeeGo is a Linux Foundation project that was established in February 2010. Like with other open source projects, anyone can contribute to the MeeGo project and become a part of the MeeGo community. You can learn more at MeeGo.com.
 Koji Yakusho in 13 ASSASSINS, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing. |
In fairness to Miike, you can’t judge a director from just one film. Especially if he’s done well over eighty of them over his prolific ten year career, averaging about three to four per year. (He makes more films a year than most people get their oil changed in a year.) His genre of films range all over the map; from Romantic Horror (“Audition”), Nouveau Western (“Sukiyaki Western Django”), New Musical (“Happiness of the Katakuri’s”), or Yakuza (“Dead or Alive”).
Regardless of the genre, all of his films are unquestionably “over the top” and an “acquired taste” to an eccentric audience, mainly male, who are usually quite forgiving given the unevenness quality of his output, but have an insatiable and intoxicating appetite for more. Many of Miike fans are in it for the shock value, but also have come to known him as a filmmaker who is out to surprise his audience, as well. Regardless of what you think of his films, you will find the directors’ trademark all over each of them.
Based on a true incident, the movie takes place in Feudal Japan in 1844, at a time when peace reigns, and samurai’s are set in “relax” mode. This quickly changes, as soon as the film opens with a stark and brutal scene showing a hara-kiri of a nobleman. Though no fault of his own, he takes his own life due to the shame of his innocent daughter, though no fault of her own, had disgraced the family because she was raped and murdered by the ruler, Lord Naritsugu. It was also an act by the family of protest of having a savage, such as Lord Naritsugu, as a ruler.
He is keenly obsessed with his own forms of sadistic violence. He enjoys the fear that he instills on his victims. At will, he will rape, kill, and dismember for sheer pleasure, just because he has the power and no one will stop him. Not even women, children and babies are safe from his whimsical actions. He is a merciless tyrant. Just ask the limbless woman whom he used as a plaything…oops, she can’t talk.
Like “Seven Samurai”, the film shows how the assassins are rounded up and why they wish to fight. Shimada hires eleven samurai, along with his nephew. Even though they all have different reasons for fighting, (glory, money, revenge) they all have the same duty and honor of a samurai; to bravely fight and die as a samurai.
The thirteenth assassin, Koyata, like Toshiro Mifune’s, Kikuchiyo , whom we later meet along the way, adds some surrealistic comic relief to the film, and it works to the films advantage.
Though, the characters are not quite as well compassionately defined as Kurosawa’s, the film is quite remarkable, nevertheless. Miike has rarely been this accessible, and the film demands to be seen on the big screen, as it is a cinematic feast and a grand action samurai film. The sets, costumes, and art direction are reason alone to see if at your local theatre, if you are lucky to find one nearby. Don’t wait for it on video. You’ll do yourself a disservice…unless this movie doesn’t sound like your cup of tea.
website: http://www.13assassins.com/
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| Koji Yakusho in 13 ASSASSINS, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing |
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| The beautiful California Theatre |
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| AnnaSophia Robb, interviewer Marc Silber, surfer Jeff Clark, Bethany Hamilton |
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| AnnaSophia Robb & Bethany Hamilton |
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| AnnaSophia Robb and interviewer, Marc Silber |
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| Director of “Soul Surfer”, Sean McNamara |
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| Closing Night Party at South First Billiards |
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| Kathleen Powell interviews AnnaSophia Robb and Bethany Hamilton. |
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| Maverick Award winners AnnaSophia Robb and Bethany Hamilton |
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| Marcus Siu and AnneSophia Robb |
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| Bethany Hamilton and Marcus Siu |
 Bethany (AnnaSophia Robb) and Alana (Lorraine Nicholson) are competitors on the water, best friends on shore. |
Reviewed by Marcus Siu
 From left to right - Bethany Hamilton and AnnaSophia Robb. |
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