The premiere of the most expensive soap opera will burst up soon in the Web!

Internet TV is developing fast. Video streaming companies lay hands on more and more different spheres of traditional TV business. Educational and entertainment programs, news and analytical reviews – all of them can be watched on the Net. But they are moving on. They are moving to the industry of soap operas.

The premiere of the highest budgetary internet-soap opera Beyond The Rave took place on the 2nd of February 2009 on MySpace.com, that was characterized as vampire horror film.
The budget of the film is 500 000 pounds (approximately $730 000). The soap opera is consisted of 20 series with the continuance of each 4-5 minutes, declares the “Cinema without end” company.
The action of the film is flowing between the amateurs of secret rave-parties in the Great Britain. The day before the departure to Iraque as a soldier, Ad and his best friend Necro try to find Jan, Ad’s missing girlfriend, that was seen not a long time ago in the ferocious–looking company of ravers, headed by a mysterious Meleh.
In the end when Ad and Necro had found the girl at the party, was figured out that the Meleh’s surrounding interested in something more terrible than just fun and somebody would be dead in the morning.

The film was created with the participation of the Hammer company by the order and for demonstration in the social-continental web MySpace.com. The film was released in the Great Britain, USA, in the most parts of European countries, Asia, Australia and Latin America, it has been already seen by thousands of people.

Nowadays the soap-opera is prepared to the internet output in Russia. The film has an age restriction — not allowed under 18. Also you can play a co-film game and listen to soundtracks at the official site.

Help to understand bugs with CamStudio

Sometimes it is necessary to write a sequence of operations with the program for describing a bug. It helps software developers to increase the quality level as they spend much less time to understand a bug, and one clip can substitute a page of text. For such cases there is a program CamStudio.

Its installation is simple and should not call any questions. The main program features: Region – it is possible to select an area which will be captured in a video clip. Accessible values – region, fixed region, full screen. If select the option ‘Region’ the size of the recorded area will be necessary to set each time anew. ‘Fixed region’ – the fixed size of the area, before the recording begins it is necessary to specify only where it will be located on the screen. ‘Full screen’ means a full-screen mode.

Option-> Enabled Autopan. If you set this mode, the capture area will follow the cursor. At the same time it will be possible to expose the speed of frame moving.

Tools-> Screen Annotations. In this case it is possible to add various notes on the screen in the form of nice images. The image with the text can be placed in the necessary part of the screen and can be recorded.

And finally, in the menu ‘Options’-> Keyboard shortcuts – It’s possible to customize “hot” keys for various operations with the program.

‘MapReduce’ Data Processing

In 2004 Google reported about the data processing model which they used. This model is based on the idea that the data is handled by a pair of simple functions – Map and Reduce. The first function – Map – selects a set of pairs ‘key/values’ from the input data (which are also the pairs ‘key/value’), and the second one combines / groups these pairs, and, besides, produces pairs, more often less pairs than have come for inputting.

An additional element is the distributed file system GoogleFS thanks to which a processed file and all the intermediate information become easily accessible from any computer in the cluster. Since all processing architecture consists of small functions, processing can be easily vectorized in the cluster. Splitting into separate pieces and restoring after failure becomes easier. Using the distributed file system we divide the data into small pieces, a separate cluster element works with each of them.

The same idea can be also met under the name ‘Split/Aggregate’ i.e. the essence is in the idea that the input data (irrespective of the size) is divided into separate units (the stage ‘split’), for example line by line, each line as a separate value for processing. These line blocks are arranged in the cluster for processing where for the function ‘map’ is called for each line. The result of the performance is again combined (reduce/aggregate) into an output file. If necessary, the data is stored in a certain order, for example by a ‘foreign key’.

The method itself suits well for long-term processing of great volumes of data and when the certain sequence of process or getting results as new data becomes available is not required i.e. if several gigabytes of data are available for processing and we need the final result of processing, it is an excellent variant. But if the same gigabyte arrives in parts constantly and we have to send it immediately for processing, expecting a result as soon as possible, it’s more convenient to use another method rather than MapReduce and Hadoop.

Advantages and disadvantages of Six Sigma

In one of the previous posts we introduced the Six Sigma Methodology that is rather widely used nowadays. This post is dedicated to the advantages of this methodology and will help to explain why it’s so popular.

The first and most obvious advantage of the methodology is the rise of profitability at the expense of cost’s cutting down. Thanks to the involvement in the projects thanks to Six Sigma this abbreviation can be rather considerable. Six Sigma allows achieving complete satisfaction of clients. And still it is not all. The companies can calculate their success in a durable perspective, only if can surprise the clients with innovative sentences. Moreover, the companies should improve their activity continuously.

The special attention given in the methodology Six Sigma to the rigidity of the process, to its correspondence to the installed norms, contradicts the innovation which, essentially, is a deviation from the norm. The innovative approach means deviations in production, the redundancy, the unusual solutions, insufficient study – all with what Six Sigma fights. It is necessary to report it to the heads, who decided to introduce this methodology.

There is also one more aspect, rather essential to the heads, which is necessary to remember. Six Sigma – not simply a modification of the old technological methods of quality support; it is essentially new approach for company management. Experts are not inclined to oppose Six Sigma and ISO 9001 (here in Oxagile we work according to ISO, by the way). The number of experts considers a method “Six Sigma” simply as one of the statistical methods of the analysis and measurement of quality that can be used as one of possible ones while implementing ISO 9001. This quality standard orders mandatory application of statistical methods on industrial deviation which is an important part of Six Sigma.