Latest From Science, Technology And Medicine [11.16.14]

Amazon /
Cloud Computing

• Amazon Lambda takes the administration out of cloud computing (Arstechnica)

"Event-driven service will allocate resources automatically
Scaling is handled by Amazon; the Lambda infrastructure will use as much hardware as it needs in order to handle the number of events being triggered. Developers no longer need to configure or deploy EC2 compute instances, they never have to manage virtual machine operating systems, and they don't have to do anything to increase capacity.
Lambda's billing is based on the number of functions triggered and the amount of CPU time used, measured in 0.1 second increments. If the events aren't triggered, there's nothing to pay; there's no need to pay to keep a virtual machine idling for when the traffic does arrive."

• AWS Lambda - Run Code in the Cloud (Amazon Blog)

"The most important Lambda concept is theLambda function, or function for short. You write your functions in Node.js (an event-driven, server side implementation of JavaScript).
You upload your code and then specify context information to AWS Lambda to create a function. The context information specifies the execution environment (language, memory requirements, a timeout period, and IAM role) and also points to the function you'd like to invoke within your code. The code and the metadata are durably stored in AWS and can later be referred to by name or by ARN (Amazon Resource Name). You an also include any necessary third-party libraries in the upload (which takes the form of a single ZIP file per function).
After uploading, you associate your function with specific AWS resources (a particular S3 bucket, DynamoDB table, or Kinesis stream). Lambda will then arrange to route events (generally signifying that the resource has changed) to your function.When a resource changes, Lambda will execute any functions that are associated with it. It will launch and manage compute resources as needed in order to keep up with incoming requests. You don't need to worry about this; Lambda will manage the resources for you and will shut them down if they are no longer needed."

This is true Cloud Computing - no need for predefining how many virtual machines or computing instances your code would run on - just write the callback function and Amazon would stretch and squeeze computing resources as is required and bill accordingly.


Microsoft

• Microsoft goes open source, cross-platform with .NET developer tech (CNET)

"Microsoft is porting its server-side .NET stack to Linux and Mac OS X, and is making more of that stack available as open source.
In April, Microsoft announced plans to open source a number of its developer technologies, including ASP.NET, the Roslyn .NET compiler platform, the .NET Micro Framework, .NET Rx and the VB and C# programming languages. Microsoft officials said they planned to make these technologies available via a newly created .Net Foundation.
Today, the company is adding more pieces of .NET to its open-source list under the MIT open-source license, including the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR), the just-in-time compiler, garbage collector and Base Class libraries. Microsoft also is pledging to work with software company Xamarin -- which has made .NET available on other platforms -- to "bring together the Mono runtime work and our work and converge them over time,"
Microsoft is not planning to open source the client side .NET stack, which means it won't be open sourcing libraries specific to the client such as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Forms, Somasegar confirmed. (Yes,WPF is back)"

Organization of Scientific Research, Conversion Into Technological Innovations

• State of the World's Science : Why Mexico Struggles to Make Science Pay Off (Scientific American)

"The nation is poised to explode into the information economy—and yet stubbornly refuses to do so"