The new technology Intel preps to secure credit card transactions

Swiping credit cards or using payment systems like Apple Pay at stores could become much safer thanks to a new Intel system, which could also make it easier for retailers to secure data after transactions are completed.
With security breaches and customer data theft on the rise, Intel has developed Data Protection Technology for Transactions, a hardware-software bundle designed to protect credit card and personal data from hackers when transactions are being authorized.
Intel will market the chip technology to makers of point-of-sale (POS) systems, PCs and mobile payment terminals. NCR, the world's largest maker of payment terminals, has plans to put Data Protection Technology for Transactions on its products.
Intel's hardware and software security platform is adaptable to multiple payment systems. It will be supported on the latest Atom and Core processors.

This is how it works: Once a credit card transaction is made at a payment terminal, Intel's technology creates multiple layers of security to protect data. A POS terminal encrypts the data, which is transferred through a private tunnel to the credit-card processing company and ultimately to the bank authorizing the transaction.
Bundling on multiple layers of security minimizes the risk of data getting intercepted in the course of paying for products and services, said Bradley Corrion, platform solutions architect at Intel.
The technology can also be used to protect the transfer of customer information to data centers, where analytics and business intelligence applications can be used to identify buyer trends.
"We need to make sure retailers have the tools they need to collect data from the end point and hold onto it securely," Corrion said.

Consumers are also using new forms of payment, including Google Wallet and Apple Pay, which use NFC (Near Field Communication). Intel's technology can protect NFC transactions, and can create a secure layer so payment data is securely transmitted.
The Intel system handles every step of a transaction, making it easier for retailers to deploy, Corrion said. Other systems use separate payment peripherals and encryption technologies, which are difficult to manage centrally, he said.
Intel's technology provides a level of communication and lockdown below the software level, thus providing a verification and security level that normal human error will not have an effect on, said Greg Buzek, president of market research firm IHL Group.
Most security today is software based and over 90% of retail breaches are due to password issues, Buzek said, citing a security report from Verizon.
"This is a critical technology for retailers who have far-flung stores and branches, with a myriad of devices connected," Buzek said.
Another benefit of Intel's technology is systems management in a secure manner, Buzek said.

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Intel's technology can accept payments only from recognized terminals with the security layer, locking out unauthorized payment systems.
"Many of the vulnerabilities that exist from our desire to plug and play go away. And as the number of devices radically expands due to kiosks, beacons, wayfinders, cameras, mobile devices and payment devices, this provides a sort of Big Brother oversight to all of your legitimate devices," Buzek said.
The software layer on the chip can be updated with the latest firmware to keep up with the latest encryption algorithms. Intel uses a number of data encryption technologies to scramble data, including the widely used SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), SHA-256 and AES-256 and RSA cryptography technology.
Source from:http://www.computerworld.com

The need for universal healthcare New technology ups

WASHINGTON, DC—Cars and trucks no longer need drivers. Executives can get digital personal assistants to read their e-mail and manage their schedules. Cities may soon send robots instead of rescue teams to save people from natural disaster areas. And medical sensors and machine-to-machine communication can now do the work of some caregivers, monitoring and helping to manage patient care.
The myriad ways that technology is creeping into the workforce and nudging out humans has long been on the minds of policy experts and economists. But some say we’ve come to a major turning point at which technology will entirely reshape employment. Ars sat in on a forum, held Monday at the Brookings Institution, to hear the latest thinking on what new technology might mean for human workers. While healthy debate ensued, one point was settled by the three panelists: healthcare needs to be decoupled from jobs.
“It’s crazy” that healthcare benefits come through employers, Nick Hanauer, an entrepreneur and author, told Ars. The future of work might see individuals being pushed out of full-time, long-term jobs and into a hodgepodge of part-time, temporary positions, such as a Taskrabbit by day and a part-time hotel worker by night. If you have a bunch of different jobs, Hanauer said, it’s just untenable for you to rely on one for health benefits.
While Hanauer was generally optimistic that humans would continue to create and find jobs however small, the two other panelists discussed the growing concern that many workers, particularly mid-level workers, would be pushed into unemployment.
Smaller and smaller companies are able to do more and more, noted panelist Scott Santens, a basic income advocate. For instance, Google, a company worth $370 billion, has 55,000 employees. That’s less than a tenth of the number of employees that AT&T employed in its prime during the 1960s.
In a companion paper for Monday’s forum, panelist Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at Brookings, referenced Harvard economist Lawrence Katz discussing the end of work. “It’s possible that information technology and robots [will] eliminate traditional jobs and make possible a new artisanal economy… an economy geared around self-expression, where people would do artistic things with their time,” according to Katz.
In such a world, universal access to healthcare would be essential, West told Ars. He highlighted the recent Affordable Care Act, which provided insurance to millions of uninsured. “From my standpoint, this is a move in the right direction,” West said.
But there’s much more to do to prepare for the “fundamental interruption” of how our economy currently works, West said. In the forum and his paper, he outlined potential solutions including a basic income guarantee, beefed up versions of earned income tax credits, and incentives to volunteer. The panelists also all called for funds for lifelong learning, which would enable employees to nimbly adapt to workforce and technological changes.
Source from:http://arstechnica.com

A Glimpse Into the Future of Database Management :Oracle 2020

The year is 2020, and the roles and responsibilities of the Oracle professional have changed dramatically over the past 15 years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the Oracle DBA job as top 10 job for growth
To fully understand the benefits of computer hardware in the year 2020, we must begin by seeing how the constant changes in CPU, RAM, and disk technology have effected database management over the past six decades.
Once we see the history in its correct perspective, we can understand the evolution of Oracle database systems into their current state.
A Brief History Lesson
The economics of server technology has changed radically over the past 60 years. In the 1960s, IBM dominated the server market with giant mainframe servers that cost millions of dollars. These behemoth mainframes were water-cooled and required huge operations centers and a large staff to support their operations.

• 1960s - Only the largest of corporations could afford their own data processing center, and all small- to mid-sized companies had to rent CPU cycles from a data center in order to automate their business processes.

• 1970s - Small UNIX-based servers existed, such as the PDP-11. However, they were considered far too unreliable to be used for a commercial application.

• 1980s - In 1981, the first commercial personal computer (PC) was unveiled, and practically overnight, computing power was in the hands of the masses. Software vendors rushed to develop useful products that would run on a PC, and the introduction of VisiCalc heralded the first business application outside the mainframe domain.

• 1990s - Oracle appears, and relational databases dominate the IT market. Large shops have hundreds of small UNIX-based computers for their Oracle databases.

• 2000s - Monolithic servers reappear, and Oracle shops undertake a massive server consolidation. By 2008, servers with 256 processors run hundreds of Oracle instances.

• 2010s - Disk becomes obsolete, and all Oracle database are solid-state. Hardware costs fall so much that 70 percent of the IT budget is spent on programmers and DBAs.

Largely the result of the advances of hardware technology, the Oracle professionals of the year 2020 have far different challenges than their ancestors way back in 2005.

• Very Large mainframe servers (Exadata) start to replace the minicomputers of the early 21st century

• The cloud processing paradigm shows that much proprietary software is accessed over the Internet (Word processing, spreadsheet, DBMS)

• PCs are replaced by IAs (Internet Appliances), and laptops and just screens and keyboards with a Java-enabled web browser.

• High-speed network bandwidth allows instant content delivery and server-to-server communications

• The Internet becomes non-anonymous (thanks to Oracle?s Larry Ellison)

• All database systems are solid-state

• Databases become three dimensional, allowing for temporal data presentation

It?s really important to note that all of these changes were the direct reaction to advances in hardware technology. Let?s quickly review the major advances in hardware over the past 15 years:

• 2018 - The first database server with more than 1,000 CPUs is introduced, enabling massive IT server consolidation. Dubbed ?Special K? servers because they have more than 1,000 processors, these boxes allow even the largest corporation to place all of their Oracle instances on a single server.

• 2019 - The first 128-bit processors are introduced.

• 2020 ? Hardware prices fall so much that they become negligible, and the bulk of the IT budget shifts to human costs.

• 2025 - Gallium Arsenide replaces silicon for RAM chips, increasing access speed into picoseconds.

• 2030 - Worldwide high-speed satellite becomes the backbone of the Internet.

• 2040 - Optical eye readers can identify your retina signature, and a quick glance is all that is required for positive identification.

These hardware changes also precipitated important social changes, and the increasing availability of computing resources led to worldwide infrastructure regulations:

• 2005 - Microsoft Office 2005 uses XML standards for MS Word documents and spreadsheets. Business documents are now sharable among all software.

• 2019 - The United Nations passes the Worldwide Internet Certification Act (WICA), requiring positive identification for Internet access.

• 2021 - The SQL-09 committee simplifies data query syntax, allowing natural language database communication.

• 2021 - W3C introduces the Verifiable Internet Protocol (VIP), requiring verifiable identity to access the Web.

• 2024 - Internic implements WICA and VIP, reducing spam and cybercrime by 95 percent worldwide.

• 2028 - Luddites protest the new lack of Internet privacy. The U.S. Congress passes the Data Privacy Act (DPA), requiring all custodians of confidential data to meet rigorous security and privacy requirements.

• 2028 - Internet bandwidth increase to allow high-speed communications between any server.

• 2028 - Internet Appliances (IA) replace personal computers, and all proprietary software is accessible only through the Internet.

• 2029 - Advertising becomes active, and retinal imaging allows for instant identification and customizing of marketing messages. Walk down the street and billboards target their content to the needs of those viewing it at that moment.

Oracle Corporation has played an integral role in the movement, offering low-cost database management and capturing over 90 percent of the database market in 2020. During the past 15 years, we see Oracle playing a major role in facilitating the new technology:

• 2018 - Oracle 14m provides inter-instance sharing of RAM resources. All Oracle instances become self-managing.

• 2020 - Oracle 16ss introduces solid-state, non-disk database management.

• 2011 - Oracle?s Larry Elision finances the Worldwide Internet Identification Database, requiring non-anonymous access and reducing cybercrime. Ellison receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts.

• 2016 - Oracle 17-3d introduces the time dimension to database management, allowing three-dimensional data representation.

• 2018 - Oracle starts manufacturing IAs for $50 each, replacing PCs and making the Internet available everywhere in the world. Elision becomes the world?s first trillionaire.

As we see, there have been a huge number of changes over the past 15 years, but what caused them? Let?s take a closer look at how the advances in computer hardware precipitated these life-changing technologies.
Hardware Advances Between 2005 and 2020
Gordon Moore, Director of the Research and Development Laboratories at Fairchild Semiconductor, published a research paper titled ?Cramming More Components into Integrated Circuits? in 1965. Moore performed a linear regression on the rate of change in server processing speed and costs, and noted an exponential growth in processing power and an exponential reduction of processing costs. This discovery led to ?Moore?s Law,? which postulated that CPU power gets four-times faster every three years (refer to figure 1).

Figure 1: Moore?s Law.

However, the ?real? Moore?s Law cannot be boiled down into a one-size-fits-all statement to the effect that everything always gets faster and cheaper.

Prices are always falling, but there are important exceptions to Moore?s Law, especially with regard to disk and RAM technology (refer to figure 2):

Figure 2:The ?real? Moore?s Law.

As we can see, these speed curves are not linear, and this trend has a profound impact on the performance of Oracle databases. Let?s take a closer look.
Disk Storage Changes
I?m old enough to remember when punched cards were the prominent data storage device. Every year, I would get my income tax refund check on a punched card, and we would make Christmas trees from punched cards in the ?Data Processing? department.
My college kids have no idea what the term ?Do not fold, spindle or mutilate? means, and they missed out on the fun of dropping their card deck on the floor and having to use the giant collating machines to re-sequence their deck.
In 1985, I remember buying a 1.2 gigabyte disk (the IBM-3380 disk) for more than $250,000. Today, you can buy 100 GB disks for $10, and 100 GB of RAM for $100. With these types of advances, Moore?s Law for storage costs indicates that:

• Disk storage costs fall 10x every year.

• Storage media is obsolesced every 25 years.

Note that the change to Moore?s Law for disks shows the limitations of the spinning platter technology (refer to figure 3).

Figure 3: Disk speed peaked in the 1990s.

Platters can only spin so fast without becoming aerodynamic, and the disk vendors were hard-pressed to keep their technology improving in speed. Their solution was to add a RAM front-end to their disk arrays and sophisticated, asynchronous read-write software to provide the illusion of faster hardware performance.
RAM Storage Changes
Today in 2020, you can buy 100 GB of RAM for only $100, with access times 600,000 greater than the ancient spinning disk platter of the 20th century. In 2020, a terabyte of RAM costs less than $200.
The introduction of Quantum-state Gallium Arsenide RAM in 2009 was the largest breakthrough in RAM in more then 40 years. Before 2009, RAM always became cheaper every year, but it did not get faster. This meant that CPU speed continued to outpace memory speed, and RAM subsystems had to be localized to keep the CPUs running at full capacity.

Figure 4: Silicon chips did not increase in speed.

Until 2009, RAM speed remained constant at about 20 microseconds (millionths of a second), and even the solid-state database had to deal with the continued increasing speed of CPU resources. Let?s examine the CPU changes over the past 15 years.
Processor Changes
The same trend also exists for processor costs and speed. In the 1970s, a 4-way SMP processor costs over $3,000,000. Today in 2020, the same CPU can be purchased for under $300. CPUs continue to increase speed by four times as much every three years and cut cost in half.

• I/O bandwidth capacity doubles every ten years:
  • 8 bit 1970s
  • 16 bit 1980s
  • 32 bit 1990s
  • 64 bit 2000s
  • 128 bit 2015s
  • 256 bit 2020s

These super-cheap, super-fast processors sounded the death-knell for the age of small computers, and server blades (and Oracle10g Grid computing) were replaced by large, monolithic servers.
Between 2005 and 2009, RAM had to be physically localized near the CPU to keep the processors running at full capacity.
After 2009, the speed of RAM increased to picoseconds (billionths of a second); this development changed server architectures. The largest source of latency was not the wires between the CPU and RAM, and fiber optic cables were required to keep up with the processing speeds. During this period, computer servers first began to take on the familiar tower configuration that we know today. (As we all know, the tower configuration is required to minimize the fiber optical length between the CPU and RAM, and this is required to keep the CPUs operating at full capacity.)
As RAM speed broke the picosecond threshold and approached the speed of light, even the fastest 20th century networks could not keep up with the processing demands. Quantum mechanics and atom-state technology were combined with fiber optics to improve line speeds to keep pace with the hardware.
These advances in hardware made mini-computers instantly obsolete, and management recognized that multiple servers were far too labor intensive. Starting in 2005, we began to see the first wave of the massive server consolidation movement. The large, 64-bit servers with 16, 32, and 64 CPUs became so affordable that companies abandoned their server farms in favor of a single-server source.
Conclusion
This article has shown the major changes to Oracle database technology between 2005 and 2020, and demonstrated how hardware advances preceded and facilitated the changes to Oracle.
The main points of this article include:

• RAM speed remained significantly unchanged until 32-state Gallium Arsenide technology broke the picosecond barrier.

• Solid-state RAM disks made platter disks obsolete and heralded the creation of the first solid-state Oracle architecture.

• Improvements in Internet bandwidth made it possible to have on-demand software delivery from Oracle.

In our next installment, we will consider how the Oracle DBA?s job role is far different in 2020 than it was in 2005. We will also examine the changes to Oracle software over the past 15 years and see how the changing database technology has drastically changed the duties of the Oracle DBA.

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Inside Oracle 2020

The year is 2020 and we are taking a historical look at how Oracle database management has advanced over the past 15 years. As we noted in our first installment on Oracle 2020, the hardware advances preceded the changes to 21st century technology. It was only after vendors introduced the new hardware that Oracle databases responded to leverage the new hardware.
One of the greatest hardware-induced technology changes was the second age of mainframe computing which began in 2005 and continues today. Let?s take a look at the second age of mainframes and see how this architecture has changed our lives.

The Second Age of Mainframe computing

At the dawn of the 21st century, a push toward Grid computing began with Oracle10g, as well as a new trend called server consolidation. In both Grid computing and server consolidation, CPU and RAM resources were delivered on-demand as required by your application. In other words, the computing world went straight back to 1965 and re-entered the land of the large, single computer!
The new mainframe-like servers were fully redundant, providing complete hardware reliability for all server components including RAM, CPU and busses. It was clear that server consolidation was a trend that had many benefits and many companies dismantled their ancient distributed UNIX server farms and consolidated into a large single server with huge savings in both management and hardware costs:

• CPU speed continued to outpace memory speed. RAM speed had not improved since the 1970s. This meant that RAM sub-systems had to be localized to keep the CPUs running at full capacity.

• Platter Disks were being replaced by solid-state RAM disk.

• Oracle databases were shifting from being I/O-bound to CPU-bound as a result of improved data caching.

From a historical perspective, we must remember that the initial departure from the ?glass house? mainframe was not motivated by any compelling technology. Rather, it was a pure matter of economics. The new mini-computers of the 1990s were far cheaper than mainframes and provided computing power with a lower hardware cost, but a higher human cost. This required more expensive system administrators and DBAs to manage the multiple servers. This low TCP led IT management to begin dismantling their mainframes, replacing them with hundreds of small UNIX-based minicomputers (refer to figure 1).

Figure 1: The multi-server architecture of the late 20th century

In shops with multiple Oracle instances, consolidating onto a single large Windows server saved thousands of dollars in resource costs and provided better resource allocation. In many cases, the payback period for server consolidation was very fast, especially when the existing system had reached the limitations of the 32-bit architecture.
The proliferation of server farms had caused a huge surge in demand for Oracle DBA professionals. Multiple database servers may have represented job security for the DBA and system administration staff that maintained the servers, but they presented a serious and expensive challenge to IT management because they were far less effective than a monolithic mainframe solution:

• High expense - In large enterprise data centers, hardware resources were deliberately over-allocated in order to accommodate processing-load peaks.

• High waste - Because each Oracle instance resided on a single server, there was significant duplication of administration and maintenance, and a suboptimal utilization of RAM and CPU resources.

• Labor intensive - In many large Oracle shops, a shuffle occurred when a database outgrew its server. A new server was purchased, and the database was moved to the new server. Another database was migrated onto the old server. This shuffling of databases between servers was a huge headache for the Oracle DBAs who were kept busy, after hours, moving databases to new server platforms.

When the new 16, 32, and 64-CPU servers were introduced in the early 21st century, it became clear to IT management that the savings in manpower would easily outweigh the costs of the monolithic hardware.
Oracle professionals realized that within a consolidated server you could easily add CPU and RAM resources to the server as your processing demands increase. This offered a fast, easy, and seamless growth path for the new mainframe computers of the early 21st century (refer to figure 2).

Figure 2: The Intel-CPU mainframe architecture of the early 21st century (Courtesy UNISYS)

Server consolidation technology not only greatly reduced the number of servers. It also reduced the amount of IT staff that was required to maintain the server software.
A single server meant a single copy of the Oracle software. Plus, the operating system controlled resource allocation and the server automatically balanced the demands of many Oracle instances for processing cycles and RAM resources. Of course, the Oracle DBA still maintained control of the RAM and CPU within the server, and they could dedicate Oracle instances to a fixed set of CPUs (using processor affinity) or adjust the CPU dispatching priority (the UNIX ?nice? command) of important Oracle tasks.
If any CPU failed, the monolithic server would re-assign the processing without interruption. This offered a more affordable and simpler solution than Real Applications Clusters or Oracle Grid computing.
By consolidating server resources, the DBA had fewer servers to manage and they no longer needed to be concerned about outgrowing their server. But the server consolidation movement also meant that less Oracle DBAs were needed because there was no longer a need to repeat DBA tasks, over-and-over, on multiple servers. Let?s take a closer look at how the job of the Oracle DBA has changed.

Changing Role of the Oracle DBA in 2020

In the late 20th century, shops had dozens of Oracle DBA staff and important tasks were still overlooked because DBAs said ?It?s not my job,? or ?I don?t have time.? Changing technology mandated that the 21st century DBA would have more overall responsibility for the whole operation of their Oracle database.

Winner of the ?It?s Not My Job? award

So, what did this mean to the Oracle DBA of the early 21st century? Clearly, less time was spent installing and maintaining multiple copies of Oracle, and this freed-up time for the DBA to pursue more advanced tasks such as SQL tuning and database performance optimization.

But the sad reality of server consolidation was that thousands of mediocre Oracle DBAs lost their jobs to this trend. The best DBAs continued to find work, but DBAs who were used for the repetitive tasks of installing upgrades on hundreds of small servers were displaced (refer to figure 3).

Figure 3: The changing dynamics of human and hardware costs

The surviving Oracle DBAs found that they were relieved of the tedium of applying patches to multiple servers, constantly re-allocating server resources with Oracle Grid control, and constantly monitoring and tuning multiple systems. The DBA job role became far more demanding, and many companies started to view the DBA as a technical management position, encompassing far more responsibility than the traditional DBA.
Consequently, many computer professionals and Oracle DBAs were faced with a new requirement to have degrees in both computer science and business administration. The business administration allowed them to understand the working of internal systems and helped them to design the corporate database.
By 2015, the automation of many of the Oracle DBA functions led to the Oracle professional accepting responsibility for a whole new set of duties:

• Data modeling and Oracle database design
• Data interface protocols
• Managing data security
• Managing development projects
• Predicting future Oracle trends for hardware usage and user load

Now that we understand how the DBA job duties expanded in scope, let?s take a look at the evolution of the Oracle database over the past 15 years.

Inside Oracle 2020

The world of Oracle management is totally different today than it was back in 2004. We no longer have to worry about applying patches to Oracle software, all tuning is fully automated and hundreds of Oracle instances all reside within a single company-wide server.
Looking remarkably like the access architectures of the 1970s, all Oracle access is done via disk-less Internet Appliances (IAs), very much like the 3270 dumb terminals from the mainframe days of the late 20th century. The worldwide high-speed network allows all software to be accessed from a single, master location, and everything including word processing, spreadsheets and databases are accessed in virtual space.
Software vendors save millions of dollars and they can instantly transmit patches and upgrades without service interruption. Best of all for the vendor, software piracy is completely eliminated.
The SQL-09 standard also simplified data access for relational databases. Forever removing the FROM and GROUP BY clauses, the SQL-09 standard made it easy to add artificial intelligent language pre-processors to natural language interfaces to Oracle data.
Oracle?s cost-based SQL optimizer is now 100% effective and dynamic sampling ensures that the execution plan is optimal for every query.
We also see that all Oracle software is dynamically accessed over the Web and a single copy of Oracle executables is accessed from the main Oracle software server in Redwood Shores. Several hundred master copies of Oracle exist on the worldwide server and applying patches is a simple matter of re-directing your Oracle instance to pull the executables from another master copy of Oracle.
Oracle first started on-demand computing way back in 2004 when the Oracle10g Enterprise Manager would go to MOSC and gather patch information for the DBA. This has been expanded to allow for all Oracle software to be instantly available by any Internet-enabled appliance.

Oracle?s Inter-Instance Database

If any of you are old enough to remember back to 2008, Oracle abandoned Grid computing in favor of inter-instance sharing of RAM resources. As corporations migrated onto the large monolithic servers, companies began to move hundreds of Oracle instances into a single box. These servers were excellent at sharing CPU resources between instances, but RAM memory could not be freed by one instance to be used by another (refer to figure 4).

Figure 4: Oracle Inter-instance RAM architecture

Oracle borrowed from their Real Application Clusters (RAC) and Automatic Memory Management (AMM) to create a new way for hundreds of Oracle instances to share RAM resources between instances. With RAM costs falling below $1,000 per Terabyte, multi-gigabyte data caches became commonplace.

All Oracle instances become self-managing during this time, and AMM ensured that every instance had on-demand RAM resources.

Solid-State Oracle Database

The first new generation of disk-less Oracle databases was introduced back in 2011 when Oracle 16ss was introduced. Appropriate for all but the largest data warehouses, this disk-less architecture heralded a whole new way of managing Oracle data.
With the solid-state architecture, the old-fashioned RAM region called the SGA disappeared forever and was replaced with a new scheme that managed serialization, locks and latches directly within the RAM data blocks. The idea of ?caching? was gone forever, and everything was available with nanosecond access speeds. With this greatly simplified architecture, Oracle was able to reduce the number of background processes required to manage Oracle and exploit the new solid-state disks. Oracle also improved the serialization mechanisms to make it easier to manage high volumes of simultaneous access. Oracle 16ss was the first commercial database to break the million transactions per second threshold.

Oracle3d Adds a New Dimension

With all Oracle database running in solid-state memory, the introduction of the new 32-state Gallium Arsenide chips with picosecond access speeds shifted the database bottleneck to the network. By now, all traditional wiring has been replaced by fiber optics and all system software is delivered over the web.
In 2016, Oracle 17-3d was introduced to add the temporal dimension to database management. Adding the third dimension of time, Oracle was able to exploit the ancient concept of their Flashback product to allow any Oracle database to be viewed as a dynamic object with the changes to the database available in real-time.

Where from Here?

We have seen Oracle technology come a long way in the first twenty years of the 21st century all as a direct response to advances in hardware. As computing hardware continues to make advancements, Oracle will respond and incorporate the new hardware technology into their data engine.
While it?s always impossible to accurately predict the future, we can always take clues from the advances in hardware, knowing that Oracle databases will step-up to utilize the new hardware advances within their database products and tools. 
 Source from:http://www.dba-oracle.com

Your Car Will Have By 2020 Five New Safety Features

Imagine the following: you’ve been on the road since 6 a.m., and it’s now well past sunset. You’ve got three more hours to go before you’re home and the last thing you want to do is stop. So you drain the cup at your side of its last lukewarm drops of coffee and turn the radio up a little louder. You think you’re wide awake, but actually your eyelids are drooping. A moment later they shut… “ALERT! ALERT! DRIVER FALLING ASLEEP!”
The harsh mechanical voice jolts you from your nap just before you swerve into an 18-wheeler coming in the opposite direction. You jerk the wheel to the right and pull your car just off the interstate, the angry blast from the trucker’s horn clearing the cobwebs from your brain. Shaken but very much alive, you take several deep breaths to calm your heart. A few minutes later you pull off at the next exit and into a hotel parking lot, reminding yourself that it’s better to get home a day late than never at all.
This scene may be fiction for now, but by 2020 it could be all-too-common. Features that can detect when the driver is nodding off are already in place in some cars, but their capabilities are limited. Within a few years, however, they’ll be able to monitor bodily functions like respiration and heart rate, shouting out a warning before the driver falls asleep.
That’s just one example of how technology will make driving safer over the next few years. Other developments that will soon be standard features on most models include:
1. Infrared cameras that will see pedestrians, road barriers, and other hazards, even in total darkness, and will either alert the driver or stop the vehicle automatically before a collision occurs.
2. Smart cruising options that detect when a vehicle on cruise control is getting too close to the car in front of it and reduce its speed accordingly.
3. Car-to-car alert signals that will let drivers know when there’s trouble ahead, like another car about to run a stop sign or a stalled vehicle around the next corner.
4. Sensors that will see around blind spots and straight through fog-bound conditions, alerting the driver to approaching dangers or simply taking command of the vehicle to avoid a crash.
Looking further down the road, safety engineers are already talking about so-called “smart cars,” in which technology will literally take over the job of driving. This will leave little for the vehicle’s human occupants to do but relax or maybe catch up on a little work, like airplane passengers do now.
As with the star ships in science-fiction shows, however, these cars of the future will be equipped with manual overrides in case the system goes haywire. This just goes to show that, no matter how advanced computers get, nothing will ever replace good old human brainpower. That’s something we should all be grateful for.
Source from:http://blog.autoshopper.com

Searching for a New Economic Engine - Bulgaria 2020

apan made full use of the 1964 Olympic Games to showcase its rising economic power and technological prowess to the world. Japan’s government and corporations cooperated to implement a variety of technological “firsts” for the games: the first with live satellite TV broadcast, the first with color TV coverage, the first with quartz timekeeping, the first with photo-finish and touchpad systems for determining finish times in sprint and swimming events, and the first with networked and computerized scoring system. The opening of the first “Shinkansen” bullet train, then the fastest in the world, was also coordinated to occur just a few days before the opening ceremony.

Japan is preparing to showcase its technological prowess during the 2020 Olympics as well. Docomo is working to provide a 5G network in time for the 2020 games. NHK, Japan’s national television broadcasting station, supported by Sony-developed production equipment, is preparing to make the 2020 games the first to be broadcast in 8K ultra HD, with NHK already starting limited test runs of sporting events with MLB, NFL and FIFA. Gaming and eCommerce leader DeNA and robotics company ZMP Inc. recently set up a joint venture, Robot Taxi, for implementing driverless taxi service, and plans to have a fleet in operation for the 2020 games.

I had a chance to speak about current technology trends in Japan with Marc Einstein, Head of Japan Research, ICT Practice at Frost & Sullivan, who will be in Israel next week as an invited speaker for the mHealth Israel Investors Summit taking place in Jerusalem on June 29, 2015. Marc notes that the technology industry in Japan has been experiencing many disruptions and challenges. Unlike 1964, when Japan was already well on its way on a dramatic postwar economic expansion, the mood leading up to the 2020 games is more muted. “Everyone knows how the once dominant consumer brands like Sony and Sharp are far below their peak and may never recover their leadership position again. And even given that, it’s still striking to what degree Japanese consumers have opened up to using non-Japanese electronics. No one would have guessed, even imagined, 10 years ago that a Korean company like Samsung and an American company like Apple would be the leading providers of mobile phones in Japan.”

Marc notes that the telecom industry has also been experiencing substantial disruption. With the advent of OTT communication applications in Japan, in particular the overwhelmingly popular chat and phone app LINE, voice ARPU (average revenue per user) among Japanese carriers has declined precipitously, with 2014 ARPU being almost a third of 2009 levels and data ARPU remaining flat.

This has caused Japan’s major telecom companies to scramble to find ways to capture growing revenue streams, often in very different ways. Marc point out that there is a potential silver lining in that the scrambling may help put Japan in a leadership position in some key emerging fields.

The first field is the internet of thing (IoT). Docomo is counting on their new 5G network being used not only by people with mobile phones and tablet, but also by a growing army of IoT equipment, such as connected billboards, streetlamps, and vending machines, as well as mobile-enabled cars. Marc notes that the rise of IoT could be a major driver of growth in another area where Japan has maintained market dominance: sensors. “Many IoT devices are, in essence, an electronic sensor connectable to a mobile network, so the emergence of IoT devices should result in a big increase in the demand for sensors that make those devices possible. And as things stand, most of those sensors will be made by Japanese companies.”

The second field enjoying a boost from the telecom troubles is consumer robotics, led by another telecom giant, Softbank. “Softbank doesn’t even see themselves as a telecom company,” says Marc. “They see themselves as a holding company that happens to have telecom as a large, but shrinking, part of their portfolio, and they have actively been searching for new technology areas in which to expand.” One area that has gained particular traction is robotics, exemplified by the Pepper robot, which recently became available to the public.

Softbank sold out its first batch of 1000 units within the first minute of sales, and plans to produce around 1000 units per month. Marc, who lives in Tokyo, noted that he has already seen some sales representatives being replaced by Pepper robots, and expects the trend to continue. “Japan has long held, and has managed to maintain, a leadership position in robotics. What’s new now is how cheap these sophisticated robots have become. Earlier robots that have wowed attendees at trade shows and demos cost millions of dollars. In comparison, Pepper is shockingly cheap: JPY 198,000 upfront + JPY 24,600 per month. That’s really reasonable. At that price point, buying a Pepper unit and paying the monthly fee is substantially cheaper that hiring a human sales representative.” Marc also notes that Japan’s aging and declining population is driving current developments in robotics. “A recent poll asked what would be the best way to increase Japan’s workforce in light of a declining population: increasing immigration, increasing women in the workforce, or making robots? Robots were the clear winner out the three.” Robots to help with the care of the elderly, even for providing companionship, have also seen rapid recent progress in Japan.

Finally, Marc noted that these developments can provide a “sneak peek” on what may be around the corner in other parts of the world. “Declining ARPU for telecom became a crisis relatively early in Japan, but it’s going to happen in other countries too. The Verizons and Vodaphones of the world are also going to have to scramble to deal with tumbling telecom revenue soon enough. In addition, the new Japanese developments in IoT and consumer robotics will be deployed not just in Japan but in the rest of the world as well.”

Source from:http://blogs.timesofisrael.com

The goal of no fatal accidents by 2020 360°-view new technology key to Volvo Cars’

With the development of a new safety feature that locates collision-free escape routes, Volvo Cars has taken one of the final steps towards realizing its vision that by 2020 no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car.

In December, the four-year Non-Hit Car and Truck project will draw to a close, leaving as its crowning achievement the development of next-generation sensor fusion technologies that provide a seamless 360° view around a car.

A Swedish collaboration between academia, various institutions and industry, the Non-Hit Car and Truck project has focused on developing new technologies and improving existing ones in order to reduce accident risks for both passenger cars and commercial vehicles.

Unparalleled 360° view around the car - sensor fusion

One of the project's challenges was to build one cohesive detection system out of a number of discrete sensors installed around the car, something that has never before been accomplished. This required the development of a centralized Sensor Fusion framework to enable the various technologies - cameras, radar, lidar, GPS, etc. - to share information efficiently.

Through this framework, the system is able to provide a complete 360° view of the environment and perceive any potentially threatening objects that drivers would otherwise not be able to see. By focusing on viable automotive sensors, the project has taken a big step in making this new technology a reality in the near future.

Generating collision-free escape routes - threat assessment 

The 360° view is enhanced by the maneuvre generator, a new safety feature that uses software to identify collision-free escape routes in all traffic scenarios. The system, which works by constantly analyzing threats around the car, can even assist drivers with auto-braking and steering. To illustrate how the 360° view and manoeuvre generator work together, the project has built two test vehicles.

About the Non-Hit Car and Truck project

The Non-Hit Car and Truck project, an 80-million-SEK endeavor started by Volvo Cars and its partners in September 2010, will be closing in December 2014. It supports Volvo Cars’ vision that by 2020 no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car. The focus has been on developing technologies to reduce accident risks for both passenger cars and commercial vehicles. Partners include: Volvo Cars, AB Volvo, ÅF (sensor fusion development), HiQ (sensor fusion development, threat assessment), Mecel (sensor supplier) and Chalmers University of Technology (sensor fusion development, driver adaptation). The Non-hit Car and Truck project is associated with the SAFER Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre. 

Source from:http://www.volvoofelpaso.com

The new Hyundai 2020 Family City Car Project by Nicolas Stone

With brilliant features and an exceptional look, the final design of Hyundai 2020 City Car has already been exposed by Nicolas Stone. This car is designed to present a new idea of a compact car with a plug-in hybrid, based on the recent revolutionary technology developed by MIT. The exterior shell of this car is shown as latest transparent solar panels that will collect ambient light for generating electricity. This car is powered by a photosynthesis artificial system by utilizing the latest energy model. This super car needs sunlight and water only for its functionality, just like a plant needs.

Nicolas explanations:
Utilizing a new energy model, the vehicle uses the electricity to stimulate a central water tank, splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gets stored in special reserve tanks, while the oxygen gets expelled into the air as exhaust. With this model, the vehicle functions like a plant, only needing the sun and water to create its own fuel. The sleek, mono-volume design allows for optimal interior space and utility. Special design features also include layered body panels, unique headlight/side mirror units, and offset seating to allow elbow room for all occupants.
Since the principle material used to construct the exterior functions by re-directing light to the edges, I wanted to accentuate this feature in the design. To do so, I designed the roof panel to act like a canopy, suspended over the roof pillars mimicking a shade or visor. The rear lights themselves are packed into the edge of the “glass sleeve” composing the exterior, to seem as if the brake lights are being emitted from the glass edges.

Using this technology, there were key issues that had to be solved in the revision stage. While the solar panels use highly saturated dyes, this color cannot be used on the entire exterior because it would disorient the driver. To solve this, I broke up the material into three different shades (clear/smoked/colored) and strategically placed them around the vehicle in order to maximize driver visibility

Technology aside, it was important that I attempt to break the stigma against small cars in North America. To do this, I used long lines that stretch across the form, visually elongating the vehicle and providing an athletic stance. In order to maximize the use of such a small package, I used a mono-volume approach to open-up the interior space as much as possible. Another important feature to small vehicles is character… so besides a traditional “happy face”, I designed the headlights and side mirrors to be integrated into one unit that extends out from the body like eyes.

Source from:http://www.tuvie.com