Yuriy's blog

On March 11th I was speaking at Ciklum's Speakers' Corner about introduction to the big data. First of all I'd like to thank the HR department of Ciklum especially Rimma and Alexandra  for giving me this opportunity and the great place at Ciklum's SkyPoint . And of course I'd like to thank the everyone who came to this event for very nice professional discussion and good questions. I really appreciate your feedback, I already see few areas where I could improve my presentation skills as well as to ameliorate the topic of discussion, I think it is very important to keep in touch with the audience. For me also, I was happy to talk about the things I'm interested in and to find the like-minded people which could be a good start for a big data community in Ukraine. The presentation it-self is available here .

A huge and exhaustive book Hadoop: The Definitive Guide by Tom White is basically everything you need to understand the Hadoop and the "Zoo" of frameworks and libraries build on top of it. Lots of examples and detailed explanations including also chapters on how to set it up and administer. Indeed a guide to start to use your big data.

Ethics of Big Data by Kord Davis is quite philosophical book about the ethical issues of collection and exploitation of the BigData. I would say it's more oriented to the CTOs and general management audience then to the developers. It contains an interesting analysis of the Fortune 50 privacy policies and also suggests a comprehensive framework for facilitating ethical discussions in the business environment.

Yesterday in the Palais des Congrès of Paris started the Microsoft TechDays 2013 . Microsoft is well known to conduct useful events for the IT community and the TechDays 2013 is not an exception.  I was subscribed for the first day of the event, actually the most interesting for developers. My agenda contained basically the .NET related sessions and one BigData session. The day started with a keynote "Développeurs, c'est vous le chef !!" guided by  Jean Ferré , Director of DPE. It was presented in the very French way of a cooking session, where for each case you have an aperitif and than you are preparing entrée, plat and dessert. And each of that dishes is an app made tout de suite by the speakers. There were clear points in this keynote related to the strategy of today's Microsoft. It's not the company which blindly focuses on their own solutions anymore. Microsoft decided to go the way to diversify the use of the technology and finally accept

Privacy and Big Data by Terence Craig and Mary E. Ludloff is a great book that addresses the today's issues on privacy in the world of the "big data". The authors are discussing two major points of view on the privacy: the U.S. view of privacy as a commodity, and EU's view of privacy as an essential human right. Terence Craig and Mary E. Ludloff are trying to explain that your digital footprint is not only about your online activity and advertisement, but it also about the video surveillance, laws that are allowing government agencies to intrude into your private life in the name of security and many more. I recommend this book to whom is concerned about their privacy, it won't say you what to do but at least it will increase the level of your awareness.

There is an easy way to do the unit-testing of the JavaSctipt scripts in Visual Studio. All you need is a NuGet package manager to install the Jasmin Test Framework . It will create few folders and files in your project: Content, Controllers, Scripts and a View. Feel free to delete JasminController.cs, jasmine-samlpes and Jasmin view, just keep the core Jasmin JavaScript files. We don't really need them as we'll install the  Chutzpah . Install the version of the Chutzpah  Visual Studio extension depending on the version of the Visual Studio you have. It will add a menu items "Run JS Tests" and "Run JS Tests in browser", the first just outputs the results into the console the later to the browser. The important thing is to add the references of the JavaScript files under the tests into your tests files. /// <reference path="Player.js"> /// <reference path="Song.js"> /// <reference path="SpecHelper.js&

Most of our time in the modern adult's moreover family life during the working time is split into parts: sleep, work, family and kids, friends. During vacations it's all about traveling, enjoying, resting, making the difference from one described above. So I asked myself is there any time for your-self to stop, to think through the things you are doing everyday to make something better, to change the way your own life goes or to ameliorate someone's life? Is there a time for the new ideas and information, for self-education, time for the "different" between the time for kids, friends, work, sleep, traveling and entertainment? Or the privilege of this kind of time is only for students, unemployed, rich, without kids, single or even a recluse? How can someone who is waking up at 7:00 to take his kids to school, goes to work, works, has a lunch, works again, has an after-work drink, goes to home, plays with kids, goes to sleep can have a time to think of something b