Gartner believes that software and hardware companies do better in 2013 than last year. I hope so this happens, it would be good for the industry. Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending Forecast to Reach $3.7 Trillion in 2013. That would be 4.2 percent increase from 2012 spending. At the moment uncertainties surrounding prospects for an upturn in global economic growth are the major retardants to IT growth. According to the IT market research form Forrester IT market will grow globally by 3.3 per cent this year in U.S. dollar terms. Europe continues to decline (except Nordic countries, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), and growth is slower in Japan and India.
Worldwide IT spending increases were pretty anemic as IT and telecom services spending were seriously curtailed last year. Gartner believes that this uncertainty is nearing resolution and thus Earth’s anemic IT budgets to bounce back in 2013. Wall Street Beat: 2013 IT Spending Forecasts Look Upbeat article mentions that fiscal cliff deal will help unlock spending on mobility, analytics, collaboration and security technology.
According to the EPA, the average office worker uses about 10,000 sheets of paper each year. There is again a Campaign To Remove Paper From Offices. A campaign started by HelloFax, Google, Expensify, and others has challenged businesses to get rid of physical paper from their office environment in 2013. The Paperless 2013 project wants to move all documents online. The digital tools that are available today. The paperless office technology is here – we just need to use it more than our printers.
Intel x86 and ARM duopoly will continue to dominate this year. Both of the processor will sell well on their own main application fields, and they try to push to each others territories. This means that ARM tries to push to servers and x86 is trying to push more heavily to mobile devices.
Software manufacturers aim to hardware business: Microsoft, Valve, Google etc..
Still IT buyers expect too much from software they buy. This has happened earlier for long time and I expect that to continue. IT systems are easier to develop than user brains, but still system that are hard to learn are pushed to users.
IT service companies sill “sell air”. It is a good business to sell promises first and then when you get money try to do make the promised product with it. And are you sure that the backups your service provider makes can really be restored?
This year will not be a year for Linux on desktop. The fact that currently Amazon’s top selling laptop runs on Linux does not change that. Linux is more heading to smart phones and tablets that to win normal desktop.
Gaming on Linux gets boost. Valve released Steam gaming system for LinuxUbuntu users have run to use Steam game service (at the moment 0.8% of Steam users use Ubuntu, the service was started to as beta on December 2012). Valve will release this year it’s own Linux based Steam Box gaming console. Exclusive interview: Valve’s Gabe Newell on Steam Box, biometrics, and the future of gaming.
Windows 8 slow start continues. Windows 8 sales are well below projections. Computer sales dropped after release of Windows 8. U.S. consumers hesitant to make switch to Windows 8. Uncertainty could turn Windows 8 into the next Vista. Independent report says that Windows 8 Even Less Popular Than Vista and Microsoft voice says that its new OS are chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much, in much the same fashion as Windows 7 before it. Who to believe? Let’s wait and see what happens. I expect that some users will get Significant booting challenges on EFI systems when upgrading to Windows 8.
Interest in Java will decrease compared to other languages for various reasons, recent security issues playing part on that. C Beats Java As Number One Language According To TIOBE Index. It happened already.
Software optimization becomes again talked about when CPU usage on cloud system is easily measured and costs money. Cost-Aware Architectures will be talked bout. Keeping control over cost, architecturally, is just plain hard. Usually engineers we are remarkably badly trained in thinking about cost, but corporate bean counters can now start to ask how we save cost in running the software in cloud. Pinterest Cut Costs from $54 to $20 Per Hour by Automatically Shutting Down Systems.
The world of smart connected devices (desktops, notebook, tabs and smartphones) is becoming bigger and bigger on the expense of traditional PC manufacturers. At the end of 2012 HP is still top of PC league, but trailing fourth in all-devices rankings. Samsung leads the pack in terms of device shipments and Apple is next. Lenovo is the third biggest shifter of devices on the planet. The bets for increased sales are being placed behind smartphones and tablets.
It’s deja vu all over again. You see the phrase “any time, any place, anywhere” in relation to mobile access. Mobile devices bring back that old client-server feeling. The realization dawned that client-server brought with it as many problems as it solved. Following a period of re-centralisation using Web-based architectures, it looks as if we are beginning to come full circle. When the next generation is getting all excited about using mobile apps as front-ends for accessing services across the network, we can’t help noticing parallels with the past. Are HTML5 and cross-platform development and execution environments are now with us to save us? In the real world, the fast and reliable connectivity upon which this model depends just isn’t there in most countries at the moment.
End of netbooks as we know it. Netbook sales go to zero. All major manufacturers in this category has ended making netbooks. They have been replaced with booming tablet sales.
Tablet PC shipments are expected to reach more than 240 million units worldwide in 2013, easily exceeding the 207 million notebook PCs that are projected to ship, according to NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report. The market that has been dominated by one major player, Apple, but Android tablets are quickly getting more market share.
Thin client devices seem to be popping up here and there. Dell introduces HDMI stick that turns any screen into a thin client PC. And so will several other small stick computers coming. Raspberry Pi pocket computer is selling like hot pies (nears one million milestone).
Directly soldered to board CPUs are already norm on smart phone, tablets and some laptops. There will be more and more questions when manufacturers start to drop CPU sockets on the computers. Rumors about Intel Corp.’s plan to abandon microprocessor sockets in the future has been flowing and official response has been:
Intel to Support CPU Sockets for Foreseeable Future. AMD Vows Not to Drop Microprocessor Sockets in Next Two Years. Question is still when transition to BGA starts to happen on desktop PCs.
USB speed will increase again this year. So there is again a new USB version. The future of USB 3.0 coming mid-year with data speeds doubling to 10Gbps. USB 3.0 speed to DOUBLE in 2013 article tells that USB 3.0 – aka SuperSpeed USB – is set to become 10 gigabits per second super-speedy, with a new specification scheduled for a mid-2013 release. The aim is to brings USB closer to the class-leading Thunderbolt standard. It is expected that the new specification ends to consumer hardware a year later.
Higher resolutions will become commonplace. Earlier full HD was a target. Now high end devices are aiming to “retina” and 4K resolutions. Panasonic shows off 20-inch Windows 8 tablet with insane 4K resolution Qualcomm outs Snapdragon 800 and 600: up to 2.3GHz quad-core, 4K video, due by mid 2013.
Solid state storage becomes cheaper and cheaper. You can get ssd-storage at as low as less than one dollar per gigabyte. Moore’s Law may not be running out of steam in memory as we have an insatiable appetite for memory these days. Nowadays our tastes are changing from DRAM to nonvolatile flash memory used in SSD device. For example Kingston just unveiled the world’s first 1TB USB stick and SSD drives are also getting bigger every day. We are already encountering floating-gate scaling problems for NAND flash and answer to the scaling problem appears to be growing devices “up”.
2013 in storage is dominated by flash and file systems. We will finally see some all-flash arrays starting to ship from the big boys – and this will bring credibility to some of the smaller players. Management tools are going to be big again. Expect a lot of pain as infrastructure teams try to make things just work.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Sleep disorders can be caused by the use of computer
Thing is clear from the domestic research done in Finland.
Difficulty sleeping back is not necessarily the computer itself, but the end of work physical symptoms such as neck pain.
Source: http://www.iltalehti.fi/terveys/2013080817344309_tr.shtml
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meiji Yasuda: One of Japan’s Biggest Life Insurance Companies Moves 30,000 XP Machines to Windows 8 Tablets
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/business/archive/2013/08/07/meiji-yasuda-one-of-japan-s-biggest-life-insurance-companies-moves-30-000-xp-machines-to-windows-8-tablets.aspx
Meiji Yasuda, one of the largest and most well-known insurance companies in Japan, is teaming up with Microsoft Japan and Fujitsu to upgrade 30,000 insurance sales personnel from Windows XP to Windows 8 tablets for use as their mobile sales devices.
Meiji Yasuda’s goal is to enhance the way they engage their customers and deliver on a vision of serving customers anytime, anywhere, and doing so without giving up the benefit of a connected office experience. It’s that kind of powerful customer service they’re aiming to deliver by migrating from Windows XP to Windows 8 tablets starting in September.
In one of the largest Windows 8 tablet deployments in Japan this year, Meiji Yasuda will use Windows 8 Pro on custom-made Fujitsu tablets to deliver a rich and interactive experience directly to their customers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China has a massive Windows XP problem
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/080713-china-has-a-massive-windows-272608.html
By the time of XP’s retirement in April, around 10% of all U.S. computers will be running the OS; in China, 65% of companies will do so
The Chinese are going to have a very, very hard time kicking the Windows XP habit.
The deadline for the retirement of Microsoft’s most successful operating system ever is eight months from tomorrow: April 8, 2014. That’s the day when the Redmond, Wash. company is to deliver the last XP security update.
The problem is that a significant chunk of the world’s PCs continue to run the aged OS, and with just months to go, a seemingly impossible task faces those users: Getting off the 12-year-old XP and onto something newer.
According to analytics company Net Applications, 37.2% of the globe’s personal computers ran Windows XP last month. If Microsoft’s estimate of 1.4 billion Windows PCs worldwide is accurate, XP’s share translates into nearly 570 million machines.
In the U.S., for example, 16.4% of all personal computers ran Windows XP in July, or about one in six, Net Applications’ data showed.
If one assumes that recent trends in XP’s decline continue, then its share in the U.S. will drop to between 9.1% and 11.1% by April 2014
But in China, where XP remains king, 72.1% of the country’s computers relied on the soon-to-retire operating system last month, or nearly three out of every four systems.
it’s been shedding Windows XP at about the same clip as the U.S., the country’s much larger current share puts it at a severe disadvantage. By April 2014, XP will still be on between 65.2% and 65.7% of its personal computers. Eight months from now, China’s XP problem will be six or seven times bigger than the U.S.’s.
Theories about the staying power of XP have been proposed by almost every industry analyst and blogging pundit.
Some people may never upgrade for the simple reason that their Windows XP PC is their last PC. When it dies, so does their interest in traditional personal computers. Instead, they’ll just use their tablets all of the time rather than just part of the time.
Migration experts have opined that the easy upgrades have been done, and what’s left are the much more expensive ones
But the large numbers of PCs destined to be running XP next April has prompted speculation — in some cases, running back years — that Microsoft will back down, perhaps at the last minute, and continue patching at least the worst vulnerabilities in Windows XP.
Microsoft’s given no hint that it will back down
touted the sales opportunities in helping customers ditch XP, claiming the migration was a potential windfall worth $32 billion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Algorithms Are the New Content Creators, and That’s Bad News for Humans
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/some-arguments-about-fair-use-pit-humans-against-machines/
When the news hit that a photographer was suing BuzzFeed for $3.6 million for reusing one of his images, some on the internet reacted with fear and horror. Because many of those people — and websites — are notoriously loose with reusing images, and they like to hide behind the blithe view that it’s all “fair use.”
These debates about the bounds of fair use will always be important, but they obscure a very unfair dynamic that is squeezing artists — and turning the web into a battleground between humans and machines. The trouble is that in many cases today, there’s no human artist, writer, or editor creating what we see on the web. Some algorithm assembled the photos and it’s enjoying a nice little loophole. The machines sail on past the rules about copyright because the law lets those companies blame any infringement on the chaos of the internet. It’s a system that’s tilting the tables against any of the human artists who write, edit, or illustrate.
In other words, the battle for fair use is unfair to anyone who plays by the old rules and tries to share with the artists because human creatives can’t compete with the automated services that aren’t sharing with the artists.
The algorithms are acting less like a card catalog for the web and more like an author. It’s a living creator.
Anyone who searches for “Death of a Salesman” gets search results with a nice sidebar filled with a few facts and some images that Google scraped from websites under fair use. In this way, they can do things that I, a lowly human, can’t do. And while I had to pay $10,000, they could “get” them for free.
The market therefore punishes the people who try to do the right thing by the photographers. If I raised the price of my book to pay for the images, even more people would choose the book “written” by Google’s computers.
Is there recourse? Well, if the algorithm violates a copyright, owners can fill out DMCA takedown forms. But it’s an onerous process that can’t match the scale of the breach, because it pits human against machine.
So what if we turned the model on its head? What if the researchers at these companies could improve their bots enough for the algorithms to make intelligent decisions about fair use? If their systems can organize the web and drive cars, surely they are capable of shouldering some of the responsibility for making smart decisions about fair use.
Such tools could help identify blogs or websites that borrow too aggressively from other sites. The search engines that are crawling the net could then use that information to flag sites that cross the line from fair use into plagiarism. Google, for example, already has tools that find music in videos uploaded to YouTube, and then shares the revenue with the creators.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is “Leadership” Overvalued?
February 06, 2006 11:04 AM EST
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976728328
Every society gives its people two educations: an “Academic” education, and an “Environmental” education. The academic part is pretty self explanatory, while the environmental education can be a bit harder to pinpoint– having mostly to do with the lessons we learn from societal values and beliefs.
The company “regretted” that they were not interested in keeping employees who were not “leaders” and, after 12 years, he found himself out of a job.
one of the things I have learned is that every society has its own “personality,” largely based on what that country’s citizens consider to be “important” to their way of life.
Some of the most consistent parts of the “environmental” education taught in the U.S. are the qualities/traits I will describe as “Leadership” and “Competitive Success.” This country excels in these areas, rising above pretty much all other societies. If I needed someone to “take charge” of a situation, I would look to the U.S.A.
What do I mean by that?
Someone who is a brilliant programmer or cook (for example) is not “valued” nearly as highly as a mediocre programmer or cook who “manages” a group of eight other programmers or cooks– or just plain people. The brilliant programmer (or cook, or salesperson) is actually often considered an “underachiever” or an outright “loser” for not wanting to “Manage,” for not wanting to “Be In Charge.” This, in spite of the fact that they are actually doing better work than the less skilled “Manager.”
Interestingly enough, many business texts discuss the concept that “everyone is promoted to their highest level of INcompetence.” At the same time, these words are broadly ignored in practice since almost no company is willing examine (not abandon, just examine) the possibility that “promote to management” may not always be the path of maximum quality and productivity. Yet, in some cases– like my friend’s– lack of “desire to lead” can be the kiss of death.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comment from http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/08/07/2015245/ask-slashdot-is-development-leadership-overvalue
Sure, we seem to need managers. And I say “seem” because there is good argument that we don’t really need them. Management, that is, in the form of full time, trained professionals who do nothing but. What we need is leaders (who can be found amongst the “Indians”, even those who profess to have no interest in a management career), and coordinators, who again can be recruited from the rank and file, and which if you structure your projects well is not a full time job in any way shape or form.
But the submitter and article aren’t even asking whether or to we need managers. This is about the idiotic notion that all leaders should be managers, and that management is the only career option after senior engineer, and that there is something wrong with those whom do not choose that career path (except perhaps the few gifted individuals who become principal consultants or CTOs). This appears to be the case in most modern organizations, but if you turn away an experienced engineer just because he is happy not to be a manager, you are wasting talent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Scientists Show Blueprints for Brain-like Computing
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517876/ibm-scientists-show-blueprints-for-brain-like-computing/
IBM researchers unveil TrueNorth, a new computer architecture that imitates how a brain works.
To create a computer as powerful as the human brain, perhaps we first need to build one that works more like a brain. Today, at the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in Dallas, IBM researchers will unveil a radically new computer architecture designed to bring that goal within reach. Using simulations of enormous complexity, they show that the architecture, named TrueNorth, could lead to a new generation of machines that function more like biological brains.
The announcement builds on IBM’s ongoing projects in cognitive computing.
“It doesn’t make sense to take a programming language from the previous era and try to adapt it to a new architecture. It’s like a square peg in a round hole,” said Dharmendra S. Modha, lead researcher. “You have to rethink the very notion of what programming means.”
Most modern computer systems are built on the Von Neumann architecture—with separate units for storing information and processing it sequentially—and they use programming languages designed specifically for that architecture. Instead, TrueNorth stores and processes information in a distributed, parallel way, like the neurons and synapses in a brain.
Each core of the simulated neurosynaptic computer contains its own network of 256 “neurons,” which operate using a new mathematical model.
“Programs” are written using special blueprints called corelets. Each corelet specifies the basic functioning of a network of neurosynaptic cores. Individual corelets can be linked into more and more complex structures—nested, Modha says, “like Russian dolls.”
For example, the researchers hope to use TrueNorth to develop systems as powerful as the human retina. The retina sorts through more than one terabyte of data each day but requires little power to do so.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lockheed Martin clinches $1bn US Government cloud deal
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/saas/5885/lockheed-martin-clinches-1bn-us-government-cloud-deal
Lockheed Martin has won a $1 billion (£651.46 million) contract to help the US Department of the Interior (DoI) move from on premise systems to the cloud.
The DoI’s data is currently housed in over 400 datacentres, rooms and closets. The organisation has said it has chosen to transition to a cloud system in order to increase efficiency and meet the US Federal Data Center Consolidation initiative.
The contract was awarded on an indefinite delivery/quantity basis with options to extend it through to the end of 2023.
“We expect to provide greater variety of services, security, and support for application owners and employees.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google sniffs at MySQL fork MariaDB: Yum. Have an engineer
Keeping the DB alive outside Larry’s grasp? Sounds good to Choc Factory
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/08/google_backs_mariadb/
Search giant Google has put its support behind an independent fork of MySQL, the famed open-source database that was gulped down by software giant Oracle when it acquired Sun Microsystems.
The Chocolate Factory has sent an engineer to the MariaDB Foundation, which looks after the fork’s codebase, community and ecosystem, and has MySQL daddy Monty Widenius himself as its lead developer.
Having Google on board and working on MariaDB at all is of huge significant to Widenius, chief technology officer of a foundation he announced in December 2012. Maria’s other sponsors include open source database consultancy SkySQL, Parallels and Booking.com.
The objective is for MariaDB to remain the kind of open-source project no single company can own. Widenius has said he regrets not taking steps to stop MySQL, his first love, from eventually being owned by a corporation – namely Oracle.
“That’s the one mistake I made,”
Widenius created MariaDB after Oracle bought Sun – and with it, MySQL. He founded developer Monty Program to support and maintain MariaDB, which was first released in 2009. SkySQL, the company that provides commercial support for MariaDB and other MySQL variants, merged with Widenius’ Monty Program in April this year.
But what does Google get?
AppEngine uses Google’s Cloud SQL for hosted storage.
Cloud SQL is based on MySQL 5.5, but ever since Oracle took ownership of MySQL in 2010, Ellison’s company has asserted its control over the database’s development and roadmap, neither courting not accepting input from the outsiders.
On MariaDB, Google has the power to influence features and keep a working version of MySQL alive and in development beyond Oracle’s control.
Widenius said it’s possible to maintain feature and binary compatibility with MySQL but only as long as Oracle keeps releasing a Community Edition of the database. “We can do that for three to five years easily. As long as there is a demand and that means as long as there’s lots of MySQL users, we can do that,” he said.
He continued: “The code is getting more and more different, but we still have binary compatibility – 99.99 per cent. You can repeat MySQL with MariaDB. Over time things will be less compatible because we are adding so much more to this and we are so much ahead of MySQL.”
Widenius estimated MariaDB is “30 man years” ahead of MySQL, on the interpreter, optimiser, bugs fixed and support for NoSQL.
On the latter, MariaDB is being positioned as providing a bridge between relational data types and NoSQL data stores, with connectors already in place for Cassandra and MongoDB.
Until then, Widenus believes MariaDB can ultimately destroy the MySQL’s OEM business – 60 per cent of MySQL is used in somebody else’s product – and MySQL is also used in the cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Acer the latest to turn to Google after poor Windows sales
http://www.citeworld.com/business/22243/acer-latest-turn-google-after-poor-windows-sales
Acer, the electronics maker that once seemed to be a big Windows 8 booster, is turning its back on Microsoft.
After posting a second quarter loss this week, it said it’s going to aggressively work on selling more Chromebooks and Android devices.
Acer’s chairman said he hopes to grow revenue from Google smartphones, tablets and Chromebooks to 10 percent to 12 percent of revenue by the end of this year and to as much as 30 percent next year.
Acer is the latest vendor to shift its weight toward Google products and away from Microsoft. HP and Lenovo, long-time hardware partners of Microsoft, have also started making Chromebooks.
Acer, and all the hardware vendors that have traditionally made the bulk of their sales from PCs, need to shift toward tablets. While many of the vendors have stuck with Windows, more and more are turning to Google, since it seems that sales of their Windows tablets aren’t making up for the declining PC sales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s Operating System Guru Goes Back to His Roots
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/jordan-hubbard/?mbid=social10600044
That iPad in your hand? It feels like the most modern of computers. But like the iPhone and the Macintosh, the Apple tablet revolves around a core piece of software that can trace its roots all the way back to the early 1970s. It was built atop UNIX, the operating system originally created over 30 years ago by researchers at AT&T’s Bell Labs.
UNIX is the same software that gave rise to Linux, the open source OS that drives Google Android phones and underpins so much of the modern internet. Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs once tried to hire Linus Torvalds, the irrepressible Finnish coder who created Linux and gave the thing its name.
But Torvalds said “No,” and not long after that, Apple hired Jordan Hubbard, the creator of FreeBSD, a lesser known, but still thriving, open source operating system based on UNIX. It was a better fit: Mac OS X shares conceptual roots with Linux, but it shares honest-to-goodness code with FreeBSD.
Hubbard left Apple last month to return to the world of open source UNIX, taking the chief technology officer post at a iXsystems, a company that offers servers and other data center hardware that runs FreeBSD.
The trick with Apple is that the software it builds is so polished. Its operating systems don’t feel like “tool kits.” They feel like the finished article. Hubbard believes open source OSes should feel the same. “Most open source people make tool kits,” he says. “They’re good tool kits that have been used in everything from Tivos to phones, but they’re still just tool kits.”
during his 12 years at Apple, Hubbard didn’t contribute code to the open source project he himself had founded
After 12 years on desktop and mobile, he wanted to get back to servers — and FreeBSD. “It was just time,” he says. “Twelve years is a long time to do anything, particularly in tech. You need to rotate your tires.”
Linux has eclipsed FreeBSD as the poster child for open source operating systems, but FreeBSD is still widely used. Google uses the OS and contributes to the open source project, according to the company’s open source guru, Chris DiBona. And Hubbard believes FreeBSD can still hold its own against Linux.
“It has greater provenance,” he says. “If I’m going to buy a car, I want to buy one from someone well established.” He also says the project is more transparent and holistic than most Linux distributions. “You want a single source tree with everything that goes into the system? You have that with FreeBSD. It’s clear what parts go into it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla links Gmail with Persona for email-based single sign-on
Usernames and passwords not needed
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/09/persona_identity_bridge_for_gmail/
The Mozilla Foundation has unveiled a new Identity Bridge that links its Persona single sign-on technology with Gmail, allowing all Gmail users to log in to Persona-enabled sites without entering a username or password.
Persona works by having users register their email addresses with a server called a Persona Identity Provider (IdP), which will then authenticate their identities for other websites using a system based on public-key cryptography, rather than traditional usernames and passwords.
Because most internet users haven’t registered with a Persona IdP, however – and many don’t even know such things exist – Mozilla has developed Identity Bridging as a stopgap measure until Persona is more widely supported.
A Persona Identity Bridge authenticates users using either the OpenID or OAuth protocols – most major email providers offer one or the other – and then translates the results into the Persona protocol for use with Persona-enabled websites.
Mozilla says some 700 million email users now have built-in support for Persona – they don’t have to sign up for any new services or create any new accounts.
Gmail Identity Bridge only worked with addresses from the actual Gmail domain
Tomi Engdahl says:
MS gets you hooked on Server 2012 Datacenter, jacks up the price for R2
Redmond has ‘broken its record’ for increases
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/09/windows_server_2012_r2_price_hike/
Microsoft is cranking up the price of its Datacenter edition of Windows Server 2012 for the forthcoming R2 release – it’s up a whopping 28 per cent on today’s price tag.
The Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter edition, which offers unlimited virtualisation rights, will cost $6,155, according to the new licensing data sheet [PDF]. The Datacenter edition for today’s Windows Server 2012 costs $4,809.
The price of the Standard edition for the next version of Microsoft’s Server product remains unchanged at $882. Standard edition provides just two virtual instances – which Microsoft has rebranded as “operating system environments”, or OSEs – per licence. The price of the Essentials edition is also unchanged at $501.
The Windows Server jump caps a record year for Microsoft according to veteran Redmond licensing expert Paul DeGroot. He claimed in a tweet yesterday that 2013 had seen “a record number of price increases” from Microsoft.
Microsoft pitches the Windows Server 2012 R2 as being built for “highly virtualized private cloud environments.” Clearly it wants to steer big businesses towards the Datacenter edition, by setting the cut-off limit of “OSEs” in Enterprise at just two.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Want To Record Xbox One Gameplay? Get Ready To Pay
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/08/08/2138259/want-to-record-xbox-one-gameplay-get-ready-to-pay
“Microsoft has seemingly not learned from their previous PR fiasco. According to the official site, some features as basic as recording and sharing gameplay videos will require a $60/year Xbox Live Gold account.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Buying Apple Products Is a Form of ‘Narcissism’
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/buying-apple-products-is-a-form-of-narcissism/
“When Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh computer in a California auditorium in 1984, the screen displayed a photo of him. At one level, it was merely a way of demonstrating the computer’s graphics capabilities. At another level, it revealed an important dimension of the human-computer dynamic: To see oneself in a creation is the ultimate expression of one’s creative spirit…
Early computer advertisements rarely showed the user. The experience of using a computer was portrayed as a disembodied one, the mind of the user fusing with the computer to accomplish tasks.
In Apple’s 2002 “Window” ad, however, the active presence of a user suggests the integration of the self, the body, and the machine
In the ad, a man is looking at himself just as much as he is looking at the impish machine. This recalls the Greek Narcissus myth where the young man is transfixed by his own reflection in the pool of water but does not recognize the reflection as himself.
The attraction of technology stems in part from our admiration of ourselves; personal technology points us back to ourselves. The man sees the computer as a separate entity, and yet the computer responds to his every move as if he were looking in a mirror. The computer symbolizes an extension of human thought, communication, and memory.
The marrying of human and machine consciousness in the “Windows” ad — where man comes to realize his admiration for the machine is due in part to how well it mirrors himself — was first suggested by the 1999 print ad “I think, therefore iMac.” The slogan is a satire of Enlightenment philosopher René Descartes’ famous phrase “I think, therefore I am.”
The ability for a product like the iMac to possess personality traits or to reflect a particular way of thinking and processing information grants it a human likeness.
In a 2007 ad, PC appears dressed in a surgical gown,
These ads rely on a metaphor that equates the human actors with the hardware and software of their respective computer systems. This biological analogy between computer parts and the human body reminds us that the metaphors that guide computer development come from our own human faculties, particularly cognition and memory.
The Apple ads, therefore, not only speak to the way in which technology has been personified (and extended as mirrors for the self), but also to the ways in which humans have been technologized. As Marshall McLuhan put it, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Steve Jobs Turned Technology — And Apple — Into Religion
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/how-jobs-turned-technology-and-media-into-religion/
“Much ink has been spilled drafting the Steve Jobs encomium. But Jobs and Apple are interesting for far more than technological prowess — they provide an allegory for reading religion in the information age. They are further evidence that shifts in popular religion throughout history are accompanied by changes in the media environment: when the dominant modes of communication change, so do the frameworks for religious belief. Still, this shift would require a fitting mythology…
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Is Working On a Cloud Operating System For the US Government
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/08/11/2058235/microsoft-is-working-on-a-cloud-operating-system-for-the-us-government
“It seems that Microsoft is relying even more on the opportunities provided by the cloud technology. The Redmond behemoth is preparing to come up with a cloud operating system that is specially meant for government purposes.”
“Government agencies already use two of Microsoft’s basic cloud products: Windows Azure and Windows Server.”
“somewhat new Cloud OS that could bear the name “Fairfax””
“enhanced security, relying on physical servers on site at government locations.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Animated PNG Creation Tools Intend To Bring APNG Into Mainstream Use
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/08/11/1329227/new-animated-png-creation-tools-intend-to-bring-apng-into-mainstream-use
“While grainy GIF images can have entertaining uses, they aren’t the ideal animated image format due to lack of full color support and an alpha channel [for varied transparency]. Animated PNG doesn’t have these faults and has been available and incorporated in quite a few browsers since roughly 2004. Lack of tools and recognition has hurt adoption, so to remedy this there is a campaign on Kickstarter to create an Open Source, high quality Animated PNG [APNG] conversion library and GUI Editor based on the APNG Assembler tool ‘apngasm.’”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows RT is to blame for Nvidia’s poor second quarter revenues
Tegra revenue was $52.6 million, down 71 percent from last year
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2288046/windows-rt-is-to-blame-for-nvidia-s-poor-second-quarter-revenues
CHIP DESIGNER Nvidia reported rather dismal sales of its Tegra mobile processor in the firm’s second quarter financial results, and it’s all because of Windows RT.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said the decline in revenues was largely due to lower unit shipments of Tegra 3 processors
“The decline comes from… coming into the year we had pretty high expectations on one particular platform and there’s no sense mainly, but it’s a very important platform that also derived from it a lot of design wins,” he said.
“And because this particular platform just didn’t do as well as we or frankly anybody in the industry had hoped, we don’t expect as much return from the investment as we had hoped.”
Microsoft’s Surface RT tablets along with Asus’ Vivotab RT were among the Windows RT tablets introduced with Tegra 3 chips.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AquaTop Display – A True Immersive Interface
Written by David Conrad
Sunday, 11 August 2013 13:14
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/194-kinect/6230-aquatop-display-a-true-immersive-interface.html
This is another simple idea with results that go well beyond what you might expect. Take a tub of cloudy water, a projector, a Kinect to sense objects on its surface and you have the first “immersive” interface – literally. You can place your hands in the water and play with the virtual objects projected onto it. See it!
If you put some bath salts in a tub of water the result is a milky liquid, which makes a really good projection surface – so why not project something on to it.
A projector and a Kinect depth camera work together with some software to allow the user to interact with the water in some amazing ways.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s evolving view of “pro”
http://kensegall.com/2013/08/apples-evolving-view-of-pro/
In recent years, many pros have started feeling like Apple’s jilted girlfriend. Through no fault of their own, the love just seemed to fade.
Apple might claim otherwise when confronted, but the telltale signs have been hard to ignore
Mac Pro. Apple’s most powerful Mac has been agonizingly slow in the update department.
17-inch MacBook Pro. This big-screen laptop was a favorite and a necessity for designers and video editors who needed that much real estate to be their mobile best. Then, poof.
Final Cut Pro. When the long-awaited update to Apple’s high-end video editing suite finally appeared, it lacked certain features critical for pro editors: multicam editing, EDL support, backward compatibility and more.
Aperture. The latest version was released in February 2010.
Could it possibly be? Would Apple ever even think about saying goodbye to the pro market?
Then there’s the bigger issue of where video editing is headed. Clearly Apple would like to rethink the fundamentals and build something better.
As a result, Apple does lose some customers. (Some of whom are rather loud about it.) But it keeps a core group of pros happy by pushing the boundaries. At the same time, it invites a larger audience of high-end consumers
Apple is still walking away from the pro market. In truth though, Apple is walking to a place that’s entirely new — and asking the pros to walk with them. They’re betting that people who love to create and innovate will appreciate a super-powerful computer designed in the same spirit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Windows 8.1 build addresses first-time user complaints
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/12/4613248/windows-8-1-build-9741-screenshots-tutorial-changes
Microsoft is expected to finalize its Windows 8.1 update in the coming days, but a near-final build has leaked online offering a closer look at some of the improvements. The 9471 build, a test version of the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build that will be made available later this month, includes some intriguing changes around the usability of Windows 8.1 across touch, the keyboard, and the mouse. Microsoft is changing the way its context menus work in Windows 8.1, and helping users discover how to use the OS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8.1 to be made available in October
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/12/4615772/windows-8-1-october-general-availability
Microsoft is currently testing near-final versions of Windows 8.1, but the company won’t release the final update publicly until October. According to sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans, the software maker will finalize, or Release to Manufacturing (RTM), Windows 8.1, but the update will not be pushed out to existing machines until October. Partners and PC makers will receive the final bits later this month, and the gap until an October release will allow them to finalize their own testing and drivers for the roll out.
We’re told that the Windows 8.1 update will be made available in October alongside new hardware from partners, including 7- and 8-inch devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s bet on touch PCs fails to pay off
Buyers reject touchscreen notebooks, spooked by higher prices and concerns about value of Windows 8′s touch UI
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9241569/Microsoft_s_bet_on_touch_PCs_fails_to_pay_off
Microsoft’s bet that touch would propel Windows 8 has run into a major snag, an industry analyst said Friday: Consumers see little reason to pay premium prices for touch-enabled laptops.
According to IDC, touch-ready laptop shipments are significantly lower than optimistic forecasts by computer makers such as Acer, whose president, Jim Wong, said in May that by the end of the year 30% to 35% of his company’s notebooks would sport touchscreens.
“We forecast that 17% to 18% of all notebooks would have touch this year,” Bob O’Donnell, an analyst with IDC, said in an interview Friday, referring to the research firm’s own estimates earlier this year. “But that now looks to be too high, to be honest.” He said IDC would probably drop its touch estimates to between 10% and 15% of all laptops.
Those numbers bode ill for Microsoft, which has tied Windows 8 to touch on all platforms, not just tablets. It bet that buyers would find Windows 8 attractive because it was designed as a touch OS, repeatedly describing the radical overhaul as “touch-first.”
“Touch was too expensive last year,” said O’Donnell. And although he acknowledged that prices have fallen, they have not dropped far enough. “They’re generally in the $699 to $799 range,” he said. That’s hundreds more, sometimes as much as double the price, of non-touch notebooks.
Touch’s premium continues to scare off buyers who have been trained by years of cut-rate PC deals, but the prices themselves are not entirely to blame. Even if the gap between touch and non-touch PCs was significantly smaller, customers would still pass because they don’t see much value in having touch on a PC.
“Touch is just not that compelling for most. There are not that many touch-required apps that people feel they must have,” said O’Donnell.
That argument has been hammered home by analysts since before Windows 8′s launch: Microsoft’s ecosystem has not produced enough high-quality, have-to-have apps to spur sales of tablets or convince traditional PC buyers to abandon the mouse-and-keyboard Windows interface and its legacy applications.
Minus compelling touch apps, people don’t see the point of spending more for a feature they don’t plan to use, O’Donnell said.
As a remedy, Acer — the world’s fourth largest PC seller — will boost the number of devices it makes that rely on Google’s Android and Chrome OS operating systems. Android is the backbone of most smartphones and tablets, while Chrome OS, a slimmed-down, browser-based operating system, powers inexpensive Chromebooks, which are notebooks by another name.
Acer’s issue with Windows isn’t its only problem — IDC estimated that Acer’s PC shipments dropped 32% in the second quarter compared to the year before, nearly three times the industry average — but by quickly turning its back on Microsoft, Acer spoke volumes.
And it isn’t alone.
Also last week, Asus, the fifth-largest PC OEM, announced it is dropping Windows RT from its OS stable. The computer maker, which saw its PC shipments plunge by 21% year-over-year in the second quarter, had been the only active supporter of Windows RT other than Microsoft itself.
The entire PC industry, touch and non-touch, has been on a five-quarter downturn, a record for the industry, and analysts expect the run to continue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apache Web Server Share Falls Below 50 Percent For First Time Since 2009
http://apache.slashdot.org/story/13/08/12/2236256/apache-web-server-share-falls-below-50-percent-for-first-time-since-2009
“Apache has always dominated the web server landscape. But in August, its’ share has slipped below 50 percent for the first time in years. The winner isn’t nginx either — it’s Microsoft IIS that has picked up share.”
“The dip is mostly the result of GoDaddy switching to IIS from Apache”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds Celebrates 20 Years of Windows 3.11 With Linux 3.11-rc5 Launch
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/08/12/1747253/linus-torvalds-celebrates-20-years-of-windows-311-with-linux-311-rc5-launch
“Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.11-rc5 yesterday wishing that it would have been a lovely coincidence if he were able to release final Linux 3.11 as on the exact same day 20 years ago Microsoft released Windows 3.11. ‘
Tomi Engdahl says:
U.S. IT employment improves the power of the cloud
According to experts, the new jobs will be created especially in the growing cloud services, will. U.S. labor authorities (Bureau of Labor Statistics) statistics, the number of new jobs has increased by 3 600 of July.
Thus, it was in July, employment record month for 15 months.
Other than labor authorities said parallel outlook. Careers are investigating Dice.com the cloud services related to the number of vacancies in August was more than five thousand.
The number of jobs increased by as much as 32 per cent, multiplied by Dice.com.
“Cloud services and related activities provide plenty of job opportunities,” Dice Managing Director Shravan Goli says.
“Dice according to statistics, big data is one of the hottest areas of IT. Responsibilities have increased by 127 per cent per year in the data big,” says Goli.
New tasks boom
Goli evaluate cloud services also indirectly benefit other IT professionals. For example, the IT infrastructure designed which are subject to more appropriate solutions for the cloud environment, so the increase in jobs in this area.
He has christened a new type of task experts as “DevOps.” Abbreviation of the English words is developer and operator.
“DevOps is a hybrid-like role in the development of management systems in tandem, so that both the time spent is reduced and there is a cost savings.”
Goli recommend to young people such as DevOps to work. According to him, these positions can earn really well, Cio.com write .
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/usan+ittyollisyys+kohentuu+pilven+voimalla/a920716
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud Drives Job Creation in Banner Month for Tech
http://www.cio.com/article/737982/Cloud_Drives_Job_Creation_in_Banner_Month_for_Tech
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 3,600 jobs were created in the tech category, ‘data processing, hosting and related services,’ marking the single best month of job growth in this category since June 1998.
Separately, IT careers specialist Dice.com noted the number of job postings on its site that mention the word “cloud” hit an all-time high this month, topping 5,000 — which is up 32% compared to a year ago. “There’s an upswing in cloud services and cloud technology-related job opportunities,” says Shravan Goli, president of Dice.
At the same time, growth in cloud services is driving hiring in related technologies. “Big data, Hadoop and other open-source technologies have also picked up steam quite a bit,” Goli says. Big data, for instance, is one of the fastest growing skills on Dice, with 127% year-over-year growth in job postings.
Devops “is sort of a hybrid role that combines the development and the operations roles to enable reduced development time and make the overall end-to-end delivery of service more cost effective,” he says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How devops and cloud can remake your IT department
They’re buzzwords, but devops and cloud computing can reshape IT departments willing to make the jump
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/081213-cloud-devops-272720.html
Devops and the cloud: They’re two of the biggest buzzwords in high-tech today. But organizations embracing these trends are finding out just how closely the two are linked, and the advantages that automating IT processes can bring.
Instead of the code-writers waiting for the IT shop to spin up a virtual machine with a replica of the production website, instead the developers can provision their own compute resources themselves. Welcome to a devops shop.
“There’s a blurring here between what were traditionally distinct roles (between developers and engineers), but they’ve now gotten merged together,” says Kyle MacDonald, vice president of cloud at Ubuntu.
It’s an environment that’s becoming more common across organizations willing to be on the leading edge of IT movements. Rafter uses a combination of tools to power its devops shop: Open source private cloud platform Eucalyptus for automating the creation and termination of virtual machines and Chef recipes from Opscode for configuring the VMs with whatever template resources the developers need.
One of the fears about devops and the cloud is what it means for traditional roles of IT folks. In this new world of combined roles, where do traditional operations folks fit in? In a recent chat on Twitter about devops strategies, Andi Mann, vice president at CA Technologies summed it up with this tweet:
A4. 5 things are key challenges to #DevOps. In order: People. People. People. People. Oh, and people.
#Techviews
— Andi Mann (@AndiMann) June 25, 2013
But Rafter has proven that automation, agile development, cloud and devops can all co-exist with data center managers. The company has two collocation facilities on either coast of the country, and a data center operations team that still runs the live web site and manages issues around automating processes, making sure there is enough hardware to meets the demand requirements and making sure the system is highly available. “Enterprises still value high quality database, storage and network engineers,”
It’s not all completely smooth sailing though; Williams will be the first to admit that running a devop shop comes with its challenges. The biggest, he says, is finding the talent to work there. At a recent Chef meetup group he attended the moderator asked the crowd how many people were looking for a job and no one raised their hand. When asking how many people worked for a company looking for devops workers Williams says practically everyone in the room raised their hand. People with developer background seem to enjoy working on front-end UIs stuff, he says. Many are not comfortable working on the operations and management side. “That’s fine, but you still need to know how the system works so that you can fix something,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Uptime Institute reveals results of 3rd data center industry survey
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/08/uptime-third-survey-results.html
“One of the most significant points in the survey, data center budgets are growing overall, but the vast majority of growth is occurring in the third-party providers, reflecting a shift in spending away from enterprise-owned data centers and toward outsourced options,” comments Matt Stansberry, Uptime Institute Director of Content and Publications.
Stansberry continues, “This isn’t the end of the enterprise-owned data center, but it should serve as a wakeup call. Going forward, enterprise data center managers will need to be able to collect cost and performance data, and articulate their value to the business in order to compete with third-party offerings
– Data center budgets: 77% of third-party data center providers receiving large (10% or more) year-over-year budget increases this year, versus just 47% of enterprise data centers.
– Self-reported PUE improved from 1.89 in 2012 to 1.65.
– Enterprise public cloud adoption rose from 10% in 2012 to 17% in 2013.
– Reported DCIM software adoption is 38% among respondents, with the major driver being capacity planning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung unveils first SSDs with 3D V-NAND memory, but only for enterprise
http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/13/samsung-unveils-first-ssds-with-3d-v-nand-memory/
Well, that was quick. Samsung said it was producing the world’s first 3D vertical NAND memory just a week ago, and it has already started building the first SSDs based on that memory. Unfortunately, they’re not meant for the enthusiast crowd: the new 480GB and 960GB drives are instead designed for enterprise-class servers, where V-NAND’s blend of high capacity and reliability makes the most sense.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stinginess is struck: Tax money spent on information technology as before
In many countries the IT budgets have stabilized or slightly increasing the downturn in the global economic situation.
Research firm Gartner estimates that 75 percent of the state administrations to use information technology this year, the same amount or more money than last year. The report is based on nearly 400 public organization of CIOs interviewed.
. In general, IT budgets are declining globally in companies, but the government IT budgets are narrowing in other areas less, Gartner reported. During the current year the total national consumption of IT narrowing moderate 1.3 per cent from last year.
“Government CIOs the views of the action to cut costs is more important than IT cost cutting”, Gartner estimates.
Stabilized in IT budgets also allow the launch of new projects, Gartner believes.
According to Gartner, the bi-systems, the importance of IT managers in public organizations indicates a willingness to develop services in a proactive manner.
Second, the most important issue of Public CIO’s identified IT management and workforce development.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/saituus+ei+iskenyt+verorahoja+kuluu+tietotekniikkaan+kuten+ennen/a920860
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold have another wild idea: Automatically generating video from text
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/gates-myhrvold-crazy-idea-autogenerating-video-text/
Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold, the technology duo who brought us such classics as the Hurricane Suppression System for the Gulf of Mexico, are back with another idea: A device or app that can automatically create a customized video snippet from any random selection of text.
We know this, of course, because they filed for a patent on the approach.
The newly surfaced patent application, “Autogenerating Video From Text,” describes a device that can scan text on a page, read and analyze the text, understand what a given sentence is saying and automatically create some kind of video (or series of pictures) based on that text … with features that tailor the experience to a user’s preferences.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infographic: An Amazing Atlas of the World Wide Web
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08/infographic-these-beautiful-visualization-create-an-atlas-of-the-world-wide-web/
Aizenberg created the Atlas of the World Wide Web, a 120-page visual guide to how the internet has blurred the traditional, physical borders around the world. The atlas’ six chapters, which span everything from IP addresses to internet infrastructure to e-commerce, feature striking visualizations that highlight often unnoticed trends brought on by the spread of the internet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Graphics News
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-graphics-news
The graphics stack in Linux comprises a number of distinct projects, and in this article we’ll take a look at the current development of X.org, Wayland, and Cairo.
Linux graphics have undergone a major evolution over the past decade in two respects. First has been a shift from 2D system rendering, to today’s hardware-accelerated 3D system compositing. Second has been a large-scale migration of graphics support from X down to the kernel level, where it can take maximum advantage of hardware capabilities. In recent years the former has exposed limitations in X.org’s design, while the latter made it much easier to reimplement a graphics stack separately from X.
Thus there is now both the motivation and means to replace X, and this has led to a couple efforts to do just that. Wayland is slowly but surely becoming a useful affair, and Canonical’s Mir efforts are offering a credible new challenge. Yet recently X.org has embarked on development of DRI3, demonstrating that this venerable project is not yet ready to fade into the sunset.
Tomi Engdahl says:
They don’t make Windows like they used to
http://www.zdnet.com/they-dont-make-windows-like-they-used-to-7000019390/
Summary: Microsoft is making the Windows sausage differently these days. And that impacts everything from how products are tested, to how they’re launched and updated.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lawyers sue Microsoft over Surface RT ‘unmitigated disaster’
Allege that execs knew of tablet’s failure months before taking massive write-off, deceiving investors
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241606/Lawyers_sue_Microsoft_over_Surface_RT_unmitigated_disaster_
Computerworld – Several law firms joined forces on Monday to sue Microsoft, accusing the company of misleading shareholders about sales of the Surface RT tablet and calling its entry into the tablet market an “unmitigated disaster.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s trillion-edge, Hadoop-based and open source graph-processing engine
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/14/facebooks-trillion-edge-hadoop-based-graph-processing-engine/
Facebook has detailed its extensive improvements to the open source Apache Giraph graph-processing platform. The project, which is built on top of Hadoop, can now process trillions of connections between people, places and things in minutes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Much Will PRISM Cost the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry ?
http://www2.itif.org/2013-cloud-computing-costs.pdf
BY DANIEL CASTRO
AUGUST 2013
The recent revelations about the extent to which the National Security
Agency (NSA) and other U.S. law enforcement and national security
agencies have used provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and USA PATRIOT Act to obtain electronic data from third-parties will likely have an immediate and lasting impact on the competitiveness of the U.S. cloud computing industry if foreign customers decide the risks of storing data with a U.S. company outweigh the benefits
The U.S. cloud computing industry stands to lose $22 to $35 billion over the next three years as a result of the recent revelations about the NSA’s electronic surveillance programs.
What is the basis for these assumptions? The data are still thin—clearly this is a developing story and perceptions will likely evolve — but in June and July of 2013, the Cloud Security Alliance surveyed its members , who are industry practitioners, companies, and other cloud computing stakeholders, about their reactions to the NSA leaks. 16 Nor non-U.S. residents, 10 percent of respondents indicated that they had cancelled a project with a U.S.-based cloud computing provider; 56 percent said that they would be less likely to use a U.S.-based cloud computing service. For U.S. residents, slightly more than a third (36 percent) indicated that the NSA leaks made it more difficult for them to do business outside of the United States.
Thus we might reasonably conclude that given current conditions U.S. cloud service providers stand to lose somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the foreign market in the next few years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
9 Tips To Avoid IT Midcareer Slump
http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/9-tips-to-avoid-it-midcareer-slump/240159848
Don’t let yourself be cast as the IT pro who’s stuck, grumpy or complacent. Consider these midcareer moves.
“Middle management” tends to get a bad rap in the business world, conjuring images of inefficient paper pushers stagnating in their windowless offices. The movie Office Space might come to mind.
“Middle” is also a critical time in a career. It’s the connective tissue between where you started as an IT greenhorn and where you want to end up. So whether you dream of the CIO seat or will be perfectly happy and successful on a lower rung of the corporate ladder, it’s an important time to make smart decisions while avoiding complacency or burnout.
With that in mind, Levy in an interview with InformationWeek shared his ideas and advice for IT pros in the thick of their careers.
He noted that most IT roles begin with an operational component: running a network, building an internal system, managing a move to the cloud. As IT pros progress along their career paths — and especially as they move into middle and upper management roles — they’re increasingly called upon to take on people management and financial and data responsibilities. The last is a relatively new phenomenon, which encompasses the willingness and ability to make data-driven decisions.
Read on for nine moves midcareer IT pros should consider.
Become An Expert
Moving up the corporate chain of command requires increasing levels of proficiency in one or more key areas.
“People who are selected to move up are subject-matter experts on something,” Levy said. “They’re not just OK at things.”
Get Involved Outside Your Company
Outside involvement makes you more recruitable, according to Levy. “You have to be involved with the [IT] community outside your company,” he said.
“Most [people] don’t do that,” Levy said. “[They] do their jobs and go home. They say they don’t have time.”
Learn To Negotiate
Moving up typically requires negotiation skills, whether you’re hammering out a vendor contract, getting the salary you deserve, or simply getting other stakeholders to buy into your vision and decisions.
“As you move up [in an organization], you’re giving presentations, you’re negotiating, you’re trying to convince people that your point is valid and that it will positively impact the performance of the company,” Levy explained.
Make Friends With The CFO
“I think everyone in IT has to become friends with the CFO,” Levy said.
Find A Mentor
“You have to be able to confide in someone,” Levy said
Learn To Have Difficult Conversations
Here’s an area where a trusted mentor can help. Regardless of your goals, Levy said midcareer IT pros must learn to have difficult conversations.
Don’t Become The Grumpy IT Pro
No matter your goals, no matter how many jerks and other petulant personalities you must deal with in your day-to-day job, no matter what — don’t become the grumpy IT pro.
“Changing bad behavior takes time,”
Position Yourself For Success
Levy pointed to three “P’s” of promotion decisions: performance, politics and perception. Note that only one of these is 100% under your control, but that doesn’t mean you can’t influence all three. ”
“Become a mentor. Become a player-coach.”
Seek Greener Pastures
If you’re happy with your current employer, you’ll look for every opportunity to move up internally or ensure the long-term stability of a role you’re already satisfied with.
“Sometimes the best career decision is to leave the company,”
“It’s the pyramid: As you move up, there are only so many places you can go [internally].”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Gamers Could Save the (Real) World
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/how-gamers-could-save-the-real-world/
The Internet Response League wants to prove gamers can make Earth a better place, one click at a time.
Three years ago, game designer and author Jane McGonigal argued that saving the human race is going to require a major time investment—in playing video games.
“If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week [up from 3 billion today], by the end of the next decade,” she said in a TED talk.
Games (particularly massively multiplayer online games), she explained, help people learn to solve problems and work in teams. The billions of hours spent on gaming represent a “virtually unprecedented human resource” that can be used to perform real-world work and become “a powerful platform for change.”
Her message was not ignored—and it has indirectly contributed to the formation of something called the Internet Response League (IRL). The small group has a big goal: to harness gamers’ time and use it to save lives after disasters, natural or otherwise.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optical Navigation Systems: The foundation of modern pointing devices
http://www.edn.com/design/sensors/4419587/Optical-Navigation-Systems–The-foundation-of-modern-pointing-devices
Optical Navigation Systems (ONS) makes use of optical physics to measure the degree of the relative motion (both speed and magnitude) between a navigation device and the navigation surface. These systems find their major application in pointing and finger tracking devices. Initially, ONS entered the consumer market through optical mice, an application in which they still experience great success. The precision ONS provides in motion sensing, however, has also been found to also make it a suitable candidate for finger tracking applications. This is evident from its widespread use in PC tablets, smart phones, digital cameras, and remote controls.
Optical physics says that whenever a beam of light is incident on a surface, a part of it is absorbed, some of it gets scattered, and the rest is reflected back
The degree (or the percentage) of absorption, reflection, and scattering depends on both the wavelength of the light and the characteristics of the reflecting surface.
A variety of optical sources can be used along with the appropriate sensors, including Light Emitting Diodes (LED), and infra red lasers. Laser sources are most commonly used as they provide high resolution and can be used on a wide variety of surfaces, including ones that are somewhat reflective
LED’s, though more susceptible to external vibrations and ambient light noise, offer an ease of implementation in applications where high resolution is not required. Compared to LASER sources, LED’s are also not required to meet any eye safety standards
In most applications, irrespective of the optical source (Laser or LED) used, a photodiode array is a fundamental part of any optical sensor. However, the arrangement and orientation of the array depends on the processing technique used and usually varies from sensor to sensor. Each array consists of several tiny photodiodes (pixels) which define the resolution of the sensor. In general, more pixels provide higher resolution.
For an ONS-based system, the microprocessor unit acts more like a small digital signal processor (DSP). As it receives data from the sensor (photodiode array) in the form of a matrix, analysis is usually complex and requires a DSP. In most systems, the functionality of the DSP and microprocessor is integrated into a single component to reduce system cost and size.
Since every ONS is usually a part of a bigger system, it needs to communicate with other functional blocks of the system. This requires support for external interfaces like USB, SPI, I2C, etc.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VMware CEO: OpenStack is not for the enterprise
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger comments are the latest in the friend/enemy relationship between VMware and OpenStack
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/081413-vmware-ceo-openstack-is-not-272867.html?hpg1=bn
Tomi says:
These are the hot topics of Finnish IT departments now
Finnish organizations in data management are among the most important issues emerging global mega trends, the research firm Market Vision survey showed.
Megatrends in the world, including mobility and community use. Finnish ICT projects, while the principal is seen as an enabler for the development of business.
“The IT staff job descriptions become wider and the need for more understanding of the business. In-depth technological know-how diminishes the outside of increased purchases of services, “says principal analyst Leena Pine Island Market Vision release.
Information management was the most important development projects in data processing and management
The second most important was seen between the systems integration. Third, the most important thing was operational applications, such as ERP systems development.
Rank fourth was the IT project portfolio management development.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/nama+ovat+kuumia+aiheita+suomen+itosastoilla+nyt/a921542
Tomi says:
Using Laptop To Take Notes Lowers Grades
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/08/15/1241215/using-laptop-to-take-notes-lowers-grades
“A study in the journal Computers & Education found that students who took notes on a laptop got lower marks then student who took notes the traditional way with pen and paper. The study’s author hypothesized that using a laptop leads to multitasking”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Snowden’s wake, China will probe IBM, Oracle, and EMC for security threats
http://qz.com/115970/in-snowdens-wake-china-will-probe-ibm-oracle-and-emc-for-security-threats/
The Edward Snowden scandal is about to become a major headache for some US tech firms, as the Chinese government prepares to probe IBM, Oracle, and EMC over “security issues,” according to the official Shanghai Securities News.
“At present, thanks to their technological superiority, many of our core information technology systems are basically dominated by foreign hardware and software firms, but the Prism scandal implies security problems,” an anonymous source told Shanghai Securities News, according to a Reuters report.
IBM, the world’s largest IT company, Oracle, the biggest enterprise software firm, and EMC, a leading cloud computing and Big Data provider, all have substantial businesses in China that could be damaged if Beijing takes a hard line on potential NSA intrusions—much as China-based Huawei, the world’s biggest vendor of telecom equipment, has been largely blocked from doing business in the United States.
Investigators at China’s Ministry of Public Security and a cabinet-level research center will reportedly carry out the probe.
Previously China’s state-run media, which is often used to signal government policy, identified eight US companies—Cisco, IBM, Google, Qualcomm, Intel, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft—as US government proxies that posed a “terrible security threat.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forrester: NSA Spying Could Cost Cloud $180B, But Probably Won’t
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/08/15/2259206/forrester-nsa-spying-could-cost-cloud-180b-but-probably-wont
“Forrester’s James Staten argues in a blog post that the U.S. cloud computing industry stands to lose as much as $180 billion, using the reasoning put forth by a well-circulated report from The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation that pegged potential losses closer to $35 billion”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Cost of PRISM Will Be Larger Than ITIF Projects
http://blogs.forrester.com/james_staten/13-08-14-the_cost_of_prism_will_be_larger_than_itif_projects
Earlier this month The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a prediction that the U.S. cloud computing industry stands to lose up to $35 billion by 2016 thanks to the National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM project, leaked to the media in June. We think this estimate is too low and could be as high as $180 billion or a 25% hit to overall IT service provider revenues in that same timeframe. That is, if you believe the assumption that government spying is more a concern than the business benefits of going cloud.
The high-end figure, assumes US-based cloud computing providers would lose 20% of the potential revenues available from the foreign market. However we believe there are two additional impacts that would further be felt from this revelation:
1. US customers would also bypass US cloud providers for their international and overseas business – costing these cloud providers up to 20% of this business as well.
2. Non-US cloud providers will lose as much as 20% of their available overseas and domestic opportunities due to other governments taking similar actions.
If it is to be believed, as ITIF estimates, that half the cloud market will be fulfilled by non-US providers, then assuming this factor has just as much impact as the PRISM leak will have on US providers, then non-US cloud providers would take a hit of another $35 billion by 2016.
Add it all up and you have a net loss for the service provider space of about $180 billion by 2016 which would be roughly a 25% decline in the overall IT services market by that final year, using Forrester market estimates. All from the unveiling of a single kangaroo-court action called PRISM.
Scary picture but probably unrealistic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Kinect and $150 software transforms ordinary surfaces into touchscreens
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046724/microsofts-kinect-and-150-software-transforms-ordinary-surfaces-into-touchscreens.html
Working with Microsoft, a company called Ubi Interactive is bringing us ever-closer to the day when everything is a touch screen.
Microsoft
The software from Ubi (no relation to the game publisher Ubisoft) turns any surface into a touch screen when combined with a projector and Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows motion controller. It’s available for purchase, starting at $149 with support for projected images up to 45 inches.
Microsoft first showed off Ubi’s software last year at its Worldwide Partner Conference.
Just don’t think of it as a quick and dirty way to have touch screens all over your house. Ideally, the projector should be set up behind a transparent surface, so you don’t block the projection with your hands and arms, and Kinect should be set up in an area where it can easily see your hand movements. Ubi recommends a ceiling mount. Also, keep in mind that for projected images larger than 45-inches, you’d need Ubi’s professional software, which costs $379 and up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s ‘touch screen’ for any surface goes on sale
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57598598-75/microsofts-touch-screen-for-any-surface-goes-on-sale/
Prototype technology that turns any surface — a wall, table, or floor — into an interactive touch screen has been years in the making. Now, anyone can get their hands on the software.