dvd03

There is a clear distinction between active and passive tracking. The law applies to active tracking, whereby something is stored on a user's computer and this something is subsequently retrieved/read. Cookie tracking is a form of active tracking. Passive tracking, whereby nothing is first stored on a user's computer, is not covered by the law. Indeed, it is difficult to see how it could ever be covered.

To stop your o2 iPhone exposing your number through http headers, go to Settings > General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network, and change both APN to mobile.o2.co.uk and username to o2web (leaving password as is).

Among the findings of the study:

* The GDS companies powered more than $268 billion in worldwide travel revenue in 2008 through 1.1 billion transactions – or more than 2,100 transactions per minute.

* In the U.S., the GDSs processed 449 million travel transactions in 2008, representing $98.7 billion in total travel sales, or 35% of total supplier revenue (gross bookings).

* GDS bookings represented $81 billion of U.S. airline revenue in 2008, or 64% of total U.S. airline passenger revenue.

* Travel revenue powered by GDSs in the U.S. rose from $93.6 billion in 2006 to $98.2 billion in 2007 and $98.7 billion in 2008, despite the recession.

* The GDSs processed nearly three-quarters of all intermediary (online and traditional travel agency) sales in the U.S. in 2008.

* Although lower than in the U.S., GDSs also account for a significant portion of all European travel revenue, with 21% of all revenue and 47% of airline bookings in 2008.

* GDS companies power the reservations and technology infrastructure for more than 163,000 travel agency locations and nearly half a million travel agents worldwide.

* The GDSs provide access to more than 550 airlines, 90,000 hotel properties, 30,000 car rental locations, and hundreds of major tour operators and cruise lines.

* The three major GDS companies, Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport, had combined corporate revenue of $9.624 billion in 2008 and employ more than 23,000 people.

* “If the transaction value enabled by the GDS industry went to a single company, it would rank third on the Fortune 500 list, behind only Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil,” said Arthur Sackler, Executive Director of the Interactive Travel Services Association, which commissioned the study.

* “Transactions powered by GDS companies are the financial lifeblood for tens of thousands of travel agents, tour operators, hotels, airlines, car rental agencies, and other participants in the travel industry. We must continue to support policies that allow the GDS industry full access to travel provider data without unreasonable restrictions, so travelers can continue to get the information they need to make informed travel choices, and the travel industry can benefit from the efficiency of a GDS-based distribution system.”

Let's consider a particular problem domain: analysis of global financial data - fixed income, stocks, derivatives, etc.

Agreed, Hadoop is a batch processing framework across a chunked archive. Work has been done recently to bring Hadoop "out of the past" - http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-13.... However, even with these latest amendments, the latency can prove more than a little troublesome for trading strategies which require rapid execution.

It is for this reason that companies like Truviso and StreamBase - both born out of highbrow academic research - have built in-memory stream-processing frameworks in addition to persistent data stores.

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that analysis of historical data is important, and that Hadoop is fit for purpose. And if we assume also, for the sake of argument, that a distributed in-memory processing facility is also important. Then which in-memory solution ought we to employ, and how ought we to relate this to the Hadoop solution which we'll also be using?

There are two companies which seek to provide real-time high volume analysis of data streams as a service: Truviso and StreamBase.

The target clients for both are principally, apparently, companies seeking to crunch financial data in quasi real time.

For more details, the corresponding paper may be found at: http://tinyurl.com/ksbobg