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:
Nokia reportedly using ‘Lumia 2520′ name for Windows RT tablet
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/21/4755020/nokia-lumia-2520-windows-rt-tablet-rumor
Nokia appears to be sticking with the Lumia brand for its upcoming Windows RT tablet. Twitter account Evleaks, who has accurately predicted various Nokia devices in the past, claims the Finnish smartphone maker will select Lumia 2520 as the final name for its “Sirius” tablet. Nokia’s Windows RT tablet was recently pictured alongside other new Windows 8.1 devices, and evleaks expects the company to announce it on October 22nd.
The Lumia 2520 is a 10.1-inch tablet with a quad-core Qualcomm processor and 1080p display. It will be Nokia’s first Windows RT-based tablet, and is expected to debut for $499
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT contracts renewed – the best idea man win
In public procurement is about to change. The EU wants to simplify the current public procurement to promote innovation and support contracts. During the summer, the Commission reached agreement on how the procurement directive must be reformed.
What the reforms mean the IT industry? A clear guideline has been that the EU wants to make contracts more flexible and simpler, says Labour and the Ministry of Senior Officer, Information Week, Markus Ukkola.
Ukkola that the reform is a comprehensive whole.
In practice, this may mean that the entity will be able to find out better what the fortune he needs a computer system, for example. Officials are also easier to find out what companies are able to implement in the first place.
IT sector may be pleased that the public procurement procedure forms list has a couple of newcomers. Of these, the second is the innovation partnership.
Innovation Partnership means in practice is that the first competition for the party, which is developing the idea.
“It might be a new product that is not yet on the market,” says Ukkola.
Following the development of the idea of the contracting entity may make the selected supplier contract for the production of the idea.
According to current estimates, will come into force in 2016. The new Procurement Directive is formally going to the EU Commission for approval later this year.
In the future, the objective is that the offers will be received in electronic form.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/ithankinnat+uudistuvat++paras+ideanikkari+voittakoon/a932504
Tomi Engdahl says:
Midsize IT Outsourcing Providers Offer Hidden Value
http://www.cio.com/article/740061/Midsize_IT_Outsourcing_Providers_Offer_Hidden_Value?page=1&taxonomyId=3154
There’s a growing shift from tier 1 offshore outsourcing providers to midsize IT services players. Scale and price are no longer the sole interest of outsourcing customers. They are seeking agility, flexibility, vertical alignment, responsiveness and trust — all of which they are more likely to find in a smaller, more focused provider.
For years, there were the so-called tier 1 offshore outsourcing providers — the Tatas and Cognizants and Wipros of the world — and then there was everyone else. But market dynamics are making midsize IT services players more attractive to buyers today.
Outsourcing customers are no longer interested solely in scale or price, says Hansa Iyengar, sourcing and vendor management analyst with Forrester Research. They’re seeking agility, flexibility, vertical alignment, responsiveness and trust. And they may be more likely to find that in a smaller, more focused provider.
“As deals get smaller, scale as a major differentiator is losing sheen. This gives smaller tier 2 players scope to compete for deals where they had thus far never been invited to participate in,” says Iyengar. Customers are also looking for more bang for their buck. “The cost arbitrage argument played in favor of larger vendors based on the economies of scale principle,” Iyengar says. “But the tables are turning now, and skills are being valued more than cost.”
Large scale vendors still capture the majority of offshore IT deals. As some customer consolidate their sourcing portfolios, they will continue to seek the breadth of end-to-end service that only the big providers can deliver. But midsize players can be a perfect fit for the small to midsize customers overlooked by larger vendors and for smaller, more intimate deals with Fortune 1000 companies, says Iyengar.
Midsize IT Outsourcing Providers Can Offer More Specialization
Specialization is a big benefit of the midsize option. These vendors tend to have deep expertise in domains such as air traffic management and passenger analytics for airlines, core banking and treasury solutions for financial services, or port operations automation and freight management for logistics.
That intimate knowledge of the problems in a particular industry and understanding of how to solve them often gets overlooked — and the providers themselves may be to blame “In their eagerness to paint themselves in the image of a larger vendor, many midsized vendors fail to articulate the very niche skills and value proposition that they can bring to the table,” says Iyengar. “So their hidden’ abilities are underestimated.”
“A major factor in the midsized vendor’s favor is their willingness to bend to the clients needs,” says Iyengar.
“They don’t mind taking risks.”
“As an IT professional grows in their career, he or she looks for challenges in the form of work on cutting edge technologies, client-facing roles, and novel delivery models,” says Iyengar. “It is also easier for talented people to get noticed faster in a smaller vendor organization than at a larger one, hence career progression is faster.” Smaller vendors tend to invest more in continuous training and development, Iyengar says, which leads to less job-hopping.
The Risk of Midsize IT Outsourcing Providers
The biggest risk with a smaller vendor, however, is staying power. “[They] are potential acquisition targets,” says Iyengar. [And] sometimes they don’t have the deep pockets needed to weather financial crises which may cause delivery issues.
Despite those challenges, mid-market providers are thriving today, says Iyengar. “Most of the midsized vendors saw above industry average growth in their revenues and margins, while the larger vendor set was floundering during the financial crises,
Tomi Engdahl says:
We’ll be uploading our entire MINDS to computers by 2045 and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years, Google expert claims
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2344398/Google-futurist-claims-uploading-entire-MINDS-computers-2045-bodies-replaced-machines-90-years.html
Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, believes we will be able to upload our entire brains to computers within the next 32 years – an event known as singularity
Our ‘fragile’ human body parts will be replaced by machines by the turn of the century
And if these predictions comes true, it could make humans immortal
In just over 30 years, humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal – an event called singularity – according to a futurist from Google.
Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, also claims that the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100.
Kurweil made the claims during his conference speech at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York at the weekend.
In Kurweil’s book, The Singularity Is Near, he plots this development and journey towards singularity in a graph.
This singularity is also referred to as digital immortality because brains and a person’s intelligence will be digitally stored forever, even after they die.
He also added that this will be possible through neural engineering and referenced the recent strides made towards modeling the brain and technologies which can replace biological functions.
Examples of such technology given by LiveScience include the cochlear implant – an implant that is attached to the brain’s cochlear nerve and electronically stimulates it to restore hearing to someone who is deaf.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux users cope with vampire mice, zombie hard drives
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049151/linux-users-cope-with-vampire-mice-zombie-hard-drives.html
Linux kernel developer Sarah Sharp is searching for a solution to the problem posed by vampire mice, she said in a presentation at LinuxCon North America in New Orleans last week.
“I don’t mean the little fuzzy, furry ones,” Sharp said. “I mean the ones that suck the life out of your battery.”
Power problems
It’s a longstanding problem with USB power management in Linux environments. A lack of device driver support for Linux means that the power-saving features used in many USB devices that enable your mouse to essentially turn itself off if you haven’t moved it lately, for instance, are rendered ineffective or even made potentially damaging in some cases.
One such issue affected a particular brand of portable USB hard drive. Sharp said that an alarming problem occurred when the drive attempted to come out of suspend mode.
“The user hears this horrible scraping noise because the driver forgot to park the disc head before it cut power to the disk,” she said.
“If you have just one USB device that’s attached to the host that’s not suspended, that means that … your host’s hardware is continually touching the [USB] bus schedule,” she said.
Essentially, this means that even a single device be it mouse, hard drive, or anything else refusing to suspend properly means that the entire USB host must remain active, creating a small but measurable power drain.
“It’s about four watts, if you just have one USB device that’s not suspended,” said Sharp.
Four watts might not sound like much, but it could have a meaningful impact on the battery life of a laptop running unplugged and spread systemically over a large set of computers in an office environment, run up business utility bills.The kernel developers have had to essentially implement a whitelist policy,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fedora Project Turns 10
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/09/23/2350220/fedora-project-turns-10
“It was ten years ago this past Sunday September 22nd, that the Red Hat sponsored Fedora project was born. The first Fedora release didn’t come until six weeks later in November of 2003.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft unveils Haswell powered Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 Windows 8 tablets
Both lighter and thinner than previous models
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2296315/microsoft-unveils-haswell-powered-surface-pro-2-and-surface-2-windows-8-tablets
REDMOND TABLET MAKER Microsoft has unveiled an updated lineup of Surface branded tablets, the Surface 2 and the Surface Pro 2, touting better battery life, improved performance and updated detachable keyboard covers in its bid to replace the laptop.
Powered by Intel’s latest fourth generation Core processors, the Surface Pro 2 is the more powerful of the two and comes with an upgraded Cleartype HD display with 46 percent more colour accuracy.
Touted as “faster than 95 percent of laptops today”, the Surface Pro 2′s graphics deliver 50 percent better performance compared to the original Surface Pro. The Redmond firm also claimed that the Surface Pro 2 will run 20 percent faster.
Microsoft has launched its Surface tablet lineup with a “power cover”, a protective case with a built-in 30W battery that apparently offers 50 percent more battery life.
Along with the Surface Pro 2, Microsoft has also unveiled its less powerful Surface 2 tablet which succeeds its not-so-popular Surface RT.
Powered by an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor and running the updated Windows RT 8.1 mobile operating system (OS), the Surface 2 is “thinner, faster and lighter than the Surface RT” and comes in a silver colour that shows off its magnesium construction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Crytek wants to use existing open street map data for video game environments
Will save development and rendering time
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2296020/crytek-wants-to-use-existing-open-street-map-data-for-video-game-environments
GERMAN VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER Crytek has challenged developers to build software that can integrate open source street map data into video games in order to save development time and ease rendering of open world environments.
Though just a concept, the idea has been put forward as part of the IC Tomorrow’s Digital Innovation games contest, a programme launched by the UK Technology Strategy Board, which is offering five businesses up to £25,000 each to develop innovative digital applications and meet the objectived of five prolific technology companies, including Crytek, Sony and Google.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle fights SAP HANA with ungodly speeds
In-memory Oracle Database 12c tech will crunch data 100 times faster
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2296316/oracle-fights-sap-hana-with-ungodly-speeds
SAN FRANCISCO: SAILING OBSESSED Oracle has upped its game in its fight against SAP HANA, having added in-memory processing to its Oracle 12c database management system, which it claims will speed up queries by 100 times.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison revealed the update on Sunday evening during his opening keynote at the Oracle Openworld show in San Francisco.
The in-memory option for Oracle Database 12c is designed to ramp up the speeds of data queries – and will also give Oracle a new weapon in the fight against SAP’s rival HANA in-memory system.
“When you put data in memory, one of the reasons you do that is to make the system go faster,” Ellison said. “It will make queries go faster, 100 times faster. You can load the same data into the identical machines, and it’s 100 times faster, you get results at the speed of thought.”
“We can process data at ungodly speeds,” Ellison claimed. As evidence of this, Oracle demoed the technology, showing seven billion rows could be queried per second via in-memory compared to five million rows per second in a traditional database.
The new approach also allows database administrators to speed up their workloads by removing the requirement for analytics indexes.
“If you create a table in Oracle today, you create the table but also decide which columns of the table you’ll create indexes for,” Ellison explained. “We’re replacing the analytics indexes with the in-memory option. Let’s get rid of analytic indexes and replace them with the column store.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft forms Chinese console venture
http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/23/4763650/microsoft-forms-chinese-console-venture
Microsoft has formed a joint venture with Shanghai media giant BesTV to launch a new games device offering streaming entertainment services into China.
The companies posted a note on the Shanghai Stock Exchange today outlining the new operation, which will launch with an initial investment of $237 million. Unconfirmed reports in the Chinese media stated that the new operation would launch a console based on Xbox technology called Bestpad.
Games console manufacturers have been seeking a way into the Chinese market since the government there lifted a long-standing ban on the import and sale of consoles.
“This is the first step of many to come for Microsoft and BesTV,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Valve announces SteamOS, a living-room operating system for games
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/23/4762370/steam-box-os
Valve is done teasing. Today, Valve has revealed SteamOS, its own operating system based on Linux, designed for living room gaming PCs. It’s the first step towards Valve’s Steam Box, its vision for an open video game console. It combines Steam’s preeminent video game digital distribution platform with a user interface designed for TVs, all on top of the Linux platform. It will also be free.
“It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines,” according to the company.
Incredibly, Valve says that major game devleopers are already on board with Linux, and will be building triple-A game titles that will run natively on SteamOS in 2014. However, SteamOS boxes will also have a workaround for the huge existing library of Windows games: in-home streaming. Not unlike the Nvidia Shield, it will include a method for wirelessly streaming games from your existing gaming computer to your TV, which Valve says will also come to the regular Steam client at some point in the future.
Also coming to both Steam and SteamOS: streaming video and music services. “We’re working with many of the media services you know and love,” Valve writes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Buying on-line service fails too often
W3 Group Finland to a survey, half of the companies experiencing succeeded in buying online, and 35 percent experienced a failure in one way or another.
Scrum Master Jonah Koski says that nowadays online services know how to acquire the agility. Agile model is the opposite of the waterfall model, where the first planned the entire project details and then the project will be implemented according to the plan from beginning to end.
Bad party waterfall model is that, as the operating needs of the customer are subject to change along the way. The risk increases in proportion to the definition of the failure of the project size, and often resort to change management.
Agile methods allow for the development of web services step by step, and the results are often seen within the first development cycles.
Decision-making should base the facts, that is, analytics, and explore online users. Development should prioritize the issues that affect a large part of the users and bring the greatest economic benefit.
Open source solutions are more valuable as an investment, but allow for almost limitless future developments.
B2B customers can buy the same product for hundreds of songs on a regular basis and make orders made much simpler if the order can be made online style ordering system. The consumer side, very small things, such as data layout, or the lack of them, of finding and other similar matters are determined by whether or not the visitor to a customer.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/nettipalvelun+ostaminen+epaonnistuu+liian+usein/a932600
Tomi Engdahl says:
I have moved the shopping and kuluttajaasiointini was mainly because I can not stand the waiting lists. Perhaps a little country, but my annoyance was due to the conditions quite something.
I dealt with in the spring due to slow web pages to cause the loss of two billion to net shopping. Here are a few points that I raised:
40% of web users will be eliminated if the download time is more than 3 seconds (Akamai, 2009)
Every extra second to reduce the load time of web e-commerce conversion of seven per cent. (Tagman / Kissmetrics, 2012)
Sharpest drop konversiokäyrässä However, the first and second seconds. Third seconds, the left is only a fraction of the purchase of the customers. (Wal-Mart 2012)
Stores are slowed down, customer loss increases
Radware’s latest report is the basis of your teeth kirskuttavaa read. Compared to the spring of 2012, the largest online stores have slowed down even further by 13.7 per cent, although it slowed the first visit to 6.8 seconds, the average page load time 7.7 seconds.
Of the earlier reviews that would mean seven per cent dripping already weak degrees of conversion. Open the open: one hundred customers buy only lost a mere seven due to the slow pace of the page.
Investigated Trades median earnings when the visitor was able to perform the first function when opening the pages of a long felt shocking 4.9 seconds while up to nine per cent top100 online stores, the figure was eight seconds or more.
The pain threshold of about three seconds, the
About ten years ago in the literature commonly referred to as the side charging the pain threshold is a surfer ten seconds. The value is, however, very outdated. Radware, more than half (57%) of the surfer disappear if the page load time is more than three seconds. Charging time increases from one to five seconds to double the number of bounces, as well as more seconds and seven percent rule aids to reduce the overall conversion 38 per cent.
The underlying increase in the content
It is estimated that the single most common factor pages slowdown has significantly increased the contents of the search a variety of sources
The average page download is about one megabyte in size, which seems tolerable, but not optimal, if the content has to download the mobile devices repeatedly.
The basics are forgotten
Even the Helsingin Sanomat commented on the Finnish trade and e-commerce, especially the poor state of the crumbling and the competitiveness against foreign online stores .
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/blogit/naamapalmu/konehuone+ei+saa+olla+heikoin+lenkki/a932586
Tomi Engdahl says:
Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft’s New Surfaces
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/09/microsoft-new-surfaces/
Less than a year after its first serious foray into building its own hardware, Microsoft showed off the Surface 2, the Surface Pro 2, and several new accompanying peripherals at a New York City event.
None of the Surface Pro 2 updates are all that surprising. Indeed, the changes are fairly subtle, as Surface Product Manager Panos Panay repeatedly emphasized during the event.
The most important update to the Surface Pro 2 is its new Intel Haswell Core i5 chip. It extends battery life by 75 percent, according to Microsoft, putting it at around 7 to 8 hours, whereas the Surface Pro only got around four to five.
“Surface Pro 2 now lets you use it all day,” Panos Panay said. “When I say it’s the most productive and powerful professional tablet today, I mean it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How many apps does it take to back up your data?
Trevor Pott counts the ways
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/23/data_backup_column/
What is the better approach to backups: a single service that can back up everything on your network or a collection of applications for backing up different items?
Over the course of my career I have been on both sides of this argument and I am still not convinced either is right.
The more the merrier
One of the simplest reasons to look towards multiple backup applications – or multiple instances of the same application – is restore speed.
I have had to do a few full-bore disaster recovery events: they aren’t pretty and they aren’t fun. The process is nerve-wracking for everyone. Will the backups work? Was anything lost? What was lost? How much will this cost?
As well as the human side of the equation there is the more pragmatic time-is-money maths. Our data centres are increasingly interdependent. Restoring data for one application doesn’t mean you can use it; often you need to get many more applications up and running – or even all of them – before the critical bit everyone is waiting for will function.
Some backup providers grok this, others don’t, but in my experience no single application is as fast as a restore from multiple points simultaneously.
How will I know?
The number of applications we use every day is growing.
How can one backup application be expected to know about all the applications in our data centres or all of the cloudy SaaS apps we are increasingly dependent upon?
A backup regime that can’t back up all your data is kind of pointless, and I fear that it is increasingly unrealistic to expect any single application to do backups for every app in use.
One thing that single backup applications frequently lack is the ability to treat different classes of data with different priorities. Every backup application I have worked with for the past 10 years or so has had the ability to do backups with differing frequency depending on source. Few can do it based on data content; that still requires scripting.
I look for more: the ability to choose the backup medium (or destination) based on data source, content, document ownership and so on; automatic duplication of some categories of data to multiple destinations; and in some cases data is so mission critical that I require an unencrypted, un-deduplicated copy ready for immediate launch in a cold standby facility.
In practice, this has meant using multiple applications just to get the feature coverage I seek.
Trust me, I’m a provider
A large part of the argument for multiple backup applications revolves around trust. Using a single backup provider means trusting that application or its vendor to be there for you when you need them. I have seen all sorts of things go sideways during restores and it leaves me very leery of backup providers in general.
If you use an online provider as the backup destination how flexible would it be? If part of your disaster involves the loss of your high-bandwidth internet connection will the company freight you disks? Will it do it without charging you the GDP of Ghana?
A single backup provider has the potential to be a single point of failure. I have certainly been in the situation where the vendor refused to support an older version of its software. The backup software naturally went sideways during restore and the lack of support was infuriating.
Multiple applications at least give the opportunity to make several individuals (or departments) responsible for backup applications. If you have a few people used to their own backup applications, they can usually put their heads together and figure out how a different one works.
Go it alone
The strongest argument against multiple backup applications and for a unified approach is that purchasing, maintaining and operating them is a significant operational expense. As the market matures, backup providers increasingly seek to differentiate themselves by novel pricing schemes. This makes trying to optimise backup providers for a single infrastructure a nightmare of Redmondian proportions.
I use a feeder approach for most of my setups. Linux systems will often back up their applications and data via cron jobs to some centralised shared storage.
Many Windows systems with touchy or niche applications will do the same. The centralised application then vacuums this all up as part of its storage run.
Another real consideration is whether or not your backups are compliant with the various data protection laws and policies that you need to follow.
The rules seem to multiply quickly and may already be too complicated for part-time admins to keep track of. A decent backup provider will be on top of this as it is a great way to set itself apart. It will have legal experts to decode and interpret the laws and project managers to turn that into something that developers can code.
Virtualisation to the rescue
The issues surrounding application proliferation and application-specific backups are becoming less important as virtualisation takes hold. If we cannot back up the individual application, chances are that we can simply back up the entire operating system it lives in.
While this is a bit like swatting flies with a nuke, other technologies such as deduplication are stepping in to make space issues less of a problem.
Virtualisation also makes continuous data protection a far more realistic goal. The idea is that every bit written by a system would be backed up in (or nearly) real time. In a private-cloud environment I don’t see why this isn’t doable: real-time virtual machine replication is something all major virtualisation vendors are working on.
Leave it to the big boys
Here we are deep into “I don’t even want to imagine what designing this out of a patchwork of backup applications would look like”. Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of conundrum I have to focus on.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flagship Surface Pro 2 costs €1,779 in Euroland
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/32603-flagship-surface-pro-2-costs-%E2%82%AC1779-in-euroland
Microsoft launched its second generation Surface tablets on Monday and the reception was lukewarm, because it failed to address a few shortcomings.
The Surface 2 is an RT rig and many in the industry simply don’t feel Windows RT has much of a future, even if the new tablet has a much faster processor and high def screen. However, the Surface Pro 2 has legs, as it should pave the way for other Windows 8.x tablets and hybrids. At least in theory.
The price still remains a major concern. The entry level Pro 2, with 4GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD, is priced at €879. As 64GB is a bit paltry for a Windows machine, we suspect the 128GB version will get a bit more attention and it costs €979, which is already starting to sound like too much.
The 256GB and 512GB models are priced at €1,279 and €1,779 respectively.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft: XP machine should not be installed in Windows 8.1
Even Windows XP using consumers and businesses is not easy.
“Windows 8.1 is not designed for installation on devices that are running Windows XP or Windows Vista,” said company spokesman Brandon LeBlanc post on the blog .
“Windows 8.1 is not designed for installation on devices that are running Windows XP or Windows Vista,” said company spokesman Brandon LeBlanc post on the blog.
Microsoft plans to provide the latest update for XP in six months.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/microsoft+xpkoneelle+ei+kannata+asentaa+windows+81sta/a932900
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pricing and Packaging for Windows 8.1
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2013/09/17/pricing-and-packaging-for-windows-8-1.aspx
For non-Windows 8 devices, here is how upgrading to Windows 8.1 using the retail DVD and download software will work:
Windows 7: Consumers can upgrade a Windows 7 PC which will bring along all their files, but will require them to reinstall desktop apps including Microsoft Office.
Windows XP & Windows Vista: Windows 8.1 is not designed for installation on devices running Windows XP or Windows Vista. Although not designed or recommended for devices running Windows XP or Windows Vista, consumers still wanting to upgrade from Windows XP or Windows Vista should buy the retail DVD instead of using the download and boot from the DVD to do a clean install of Windows 8.1. Note: files, settings and programs will not transfer – Consumers will need to back up their files and settings, perform clean installation, and then reinstall their files, settings and programs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla plan seeks to debug scientific code
Software experiment raises prospect of extra peer review.
http://www.nature.com/news/mozilla-plan-seeks-to-debug-scientific-code-1.13812
When ecologist Carl Boettiger wrote a blog post in June calling for greater stringency in the peer review of scientific software in research papers, he hardly expected to stir up controversy. But in 54 comments on the post, researchers have debated how detailed such reviews should be; one said that it was a “trifle arrogant” of Boettiger, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, to insist that computer code attain his stringent standards before publication.
Now an offshoot of the Internet non-profit organization Mozilla has entered the debate, aiming to discover whether a review process could improve the quality of researcher-built software that is used in myriad fields today, ranging from ecology and biology to social science. In an experiment being run by the Mozilla Science Lab, software engineers have reviewed selected pieces of code from published papers in computational biology. “Scientific code does not have that comprehensive, off-the-shelf nature that we want to be associated with the way science is published and presented, and this is our attempt to poke at that issue,” says Mozilla Science Lab director Kaitlin Thaney.
Researchers increasingly rely on computation to perform tasks at every level of science, but most do not receive formal training in coding best practice. That has led to high-profile problems.
More routinely, incorrect or slipshod code prevents other researchers from replicating work, and can even lead them astray.
Mozilla is testing one potential process, deploying the type of code review that is routinely used on commercial software before it is released. Thaney says that the procedure is much like scientific peer review: “The reader looks for everything, from the equivalent of grammar and spelling to the correctness of the logic.” In this case, Mozilla opted to examine nine papers from PLoS Computational Biology that were selected by the journal’s editors in August. The reviewers looked at snippets of code up to 200 lines long that were included in the papers and written in widely used programming languages, such as R, Python and Perl.
The Mozilla engineers have discussed their findings with the papers’ authors, who can now choose what, if anything, to do with the markups — including whether to permit disclosure of the results.
Computational biologists are betting that the engineers will have found much to criticize in the scientific programming, but will also have learnt from the project. They may have been forced to brush up on their biology, lest they misunderstood the scientific objective of the code they were examining, Brown says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple blings up new iMac with latest Intel chips, next-gen Wi-Fi
Stylish onesie of the desktop world gets an update
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/24/apple_releases_new_fruity_flavour_of_imac/
Apple has unleashed an update of its all-in-one iMac line, which will now come with boosted Wi-Fi and a beefed-up Haswell processor.
The iMac is the technological equivalent of the onesie – all-in-one babygros beloved of Bieber and other nubile young boybadours.
It contains all the Apple goodness in one package, meaning fanbois can disappear into the iMatrix without having to plug a big ugly monitor into a bigger, uglier box.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia seeks peace with Linux, pledges help on open source driver (Updated)
Torvalds isn’t yet ready to apologize for giving Nvidia the finger.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia-seeks-peace-with-linux-pledges-help-on-open-source-driver/
Will Nvidia give Linus a reason to lower his finger?
Few companies have been the target of as much criticism in the Linux community as Nvidia. Linus Torvalds himself last year called Nvidia the “single worst company” Linux developers have ever worked with, giving the company his middle finger in a public talk.
Nvidia is now trying to get on Linux developers’ good side. Yesterday, Nvidia’s Andy Ritger e-mailed developers of Nouveau, an open source driver for Nvidia cards that is built by reverse engineering Nvidia’s proprietary drivers. Ritger wrote that “NVIDIA is releasing public documentation on certain aspects of our GPUs, with the intent to address areas that impact the out-of-the-box usability of NVIDIA GPUs with Nouveau. We intend to provide more documentation over time, and guidance in additional areas as we are able.”
The gesture was well-received. In response, Maarten Lankhorst of Canonical wrote, “You rock!”
Nvidia’s move this week (on the same day that Valve announced a new Linux-based operating system for gaming) is a change of heart from the position it took last year after Torvalds’ criticism.
UPDATE: Torvalds has responded to Ars, saying he’s optimistic but not quite ready to apologize to Nvidia. “We’ll see,” Torvalds wrote in an e-mail. “I’m cautiously optimistic that this is a real shift in how Nvidia perceives Linux. The actual docs released so far are fairly limited, and in themselves they wouldn’t be a big thing, but if Nvidia really does follow up and start opening up more, that would certainly be great.”
“They’ve already been much better in the ARM SoC space than they were on the more traditional GPU side, and I really hope that some day I can just apologize for ever giving them the finger.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Myst Was Supposed To Change the Face of Gaming. What Is Its Legacy?
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/09/24/2215211/myst-was-supposed-to-change-the-face-of-gaming-what-is-its-legacy
“On 24 September 1993, computer users were introduced to Myst. Grantland takes a look at the game’s legacy, two decades on. Quoting: ‘Twenty years ago, people talked about Myst the same way they talked about The Sopranos during its first season: as one of those rare works that irrevocably changed its medium. It certainly felt like nothing in gaming would or could be the same after it. Yes, Myst went on to sell more than 6 million copies and was declared a game-changer (so to speak), widely credited with launching the era of CD-ROM gaming.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Windows 8 is not hip?
“Is there anyone here that would be upgraded to Windows 8 for work environment?”
None of the hand of several tens of assent does not rise out of a professor Matti Rossi last week seminar on the public’s question.
Aalto University professor summed up the situation: if the companies do not want something to say to young people, the future does not look bright.
Windows 8 operating environment is annealed specifically to the company point of view. The idea of the equipment seamlessly between Windows 8 user experience sounds great, but byodin and cloud era, it may be old-fashioned.
Stories of the companies that would actually take the benefits out of Windows 8′s philosophy is hard to find.
Microsoft’s big problem is that the image is so corporate-led. And consumers – not businesses – solve today’s devices of the future.
Many things would be easier for businesses, if we were able to predict the future winner of the platforms.
Can Microsoft’s phones then become consumers pets? Redmond giant have to do extra hard work. Marketing people and brand makers requireds erasures of the wisdom of the portrayed old Microsoft.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/blogit/uutiskommentti/miksi+windows+8+ei+ole+hip/a933312
Tomi Engdahl says:
The first test F-Secure Dropbox-killer, Younited
Finnish security company F-Secure offers consumers a custom recording service Spotify packaged. Techno Geek wonders minute choice, but to find a promising start over.
Helsinki-based security company is in the right place at the right time. Company intends to strike up Edward Snowden uncover the PRISM project markets created and begins to provide secure cloud storage.
F-Secure today revealed the name of the service – Younited – and let the experiment with how the service works.
The company’s purpose is to create a storage service that works seamlessly with the operating system. Younitedista has applications for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Windows PC and Mac. There is also a HTML5-based browser version.
The service name is silly (brings to mind a dating site). F-Secure claims service appearance tuned to hipster more than the traditional techo-nerd: the user interface is reminiscent of Spotify, not the traditional file management view.
Synchronize or share folders -
oh so what?
Before you start to use the program, the user must internalize the file sharing. Or at least one of them.
Younited can be used either by throwing the files in the sync folder, which is the traditional way of using cloud storage. The service recognizes the file type and automatically sorts the files to image, video, music, documents and views.
Another way is to define the folders whose contents are automatically copied to the cloud.
In fact, the interface is intuitive. The program offers a general view and file formats based on subviews. While it may make sub-folders, the main idea is for people to create a collection of files in the Spotify playlists. The collection may want to put any number of files, and it can be shared on any other storage services in a familiar way.
Facebook, Picasa, and Dropbox can be integrated into the Younitedia, which means that Younited works a metadata service: images and contents on other integrated services are displayed as part of the Younited view.
The software is still in development, which showed..
Since the program is still in progress, not all of the final version come with features not yet in place.
Younited is not yet publicly available. F-Secure of October to the beginning of service, “a three-digit number of” testers. In fact, the test will start in November and the program will be released sometime early next year.
Basic use is free, and as complimentary get five gigabytes of storage. In addition there are two commercial versions.
Laaksonen says that the version of the service will also enable small and medium-sized enterprises.
Can Younited become Dropoxin and partners contender? Maybe. – if they are lucky and service becomes fashionable.
F-Secure will compete in storage instead of the service features. Some of the features, such as a mobile service, file scanning for malware virtual sandbox, there are free and some paid.
Another major competitive advantage is Finnish. Laaksonen assure you that the service is no back doors.
The content is encrypted with 256-bit AES algorithm and the content is digested in three different locations. One stored in the service files to another user data and metadata in the third.
The data centers are located: two in Finland and F-Secure does not reveal the location of third.
In the same market, competing with, among other things, Dropbox, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Apple’s iCloud and Google Drive. Dropbox offers 2GB of free storage, SkyDrive 7 GB, 5 GB of iCloud and Google Drive 15 GB.
Sources:
http://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/09/12/f-secure-haastaa-googlen-ja-dropboxin–jakaa-ilmaiseksi-salattua-tallennustilaa/201312767/66
http://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/09/25/ensitestissa-f-securen-dropboxin-tappaja-younited/201313308/66
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung targets business users — and BlackBerry — with new app store
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57604453-94/samsung-targets-business-users-and-blackberry-with-new-app-store/
The Korean electronics giant is working with software developers, such as Citrix and SAP, to offer enterprise apps that have been tweaked to work better with Samsung’s mobile devices features like S Pen.
Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get more grim for BlackBerry, rival Samsung has made another grab for the company’s core group of business users.
The Korean electronics giant on Wednesday unveiled its latest push in the mobile enterprise market — the “Samsung Solutions Exchange,” a sort of app store for business programs. The company isn’t simply rounding up apps ideal for enterprise users. Rather, Samsung is talking with customers to find out what they need and then working with software developers to provide programs that use features specific to Samsung devices.
To do this, Samsung has released its device software development kit and more than 1,000 APIs to partners in the Samsung Solution Exchange. Those include smaller companies such as Xora and Citrix, and will eventually include bigger names such as SAP, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com.
“Historically, app providers gave a fully functioning app for desktop and a limited [version] on mobile,” Tim Wagner, vice president and general manager of Samsung Mobile’s enterprise business, told CNET. “Now companies want full functionality on mobile devices, and they want it on mobile first.”
At launch, Samsung is not creating new apps but is helping software makers tweak their apps to take advantage of unique Samsung device features such as its S Pen, gestures, and screen mirroring.
Samsung, which became the world’s largest smartphone vendor more than a year ago, has been aggressively ramping up its push to attract corporate users for its technology. The company launched Samsung for Enterprise, or SAFE, technology two years ago in an attempt to make its devices more business friendly. Its many features include encryption, VPN connectivity, and mobile device management capabilities such as remote wipe. And it also launched its Knox security platform to make its devices secure enough for the U.S. Defense Department and other organizations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Second Coming of Java: A Relic Returns to Rule Web
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/the-second-coming-of-java/all/
Since its inception in 2006, Twitter had run on software built with a computer programming tool called Ruby on Rails — a tool that played a huge role in the web’s resurgence in the middle of the decade, letting engineers build sites so quickly and easily. But Twitter’s engineers came to realize that Ruby wasn’t the best way to juggle tweets from millions of people across the globe — and make sure the site could stay up during its headline moment with the president of Russia. The best way was a brand new architecture based on Java, a programing tool that has grown more powerful than many expected.
If you know Java at all, you probably think of it as something from the late ’90s, a child of the original internet boom, a little piece of downloadable software that sent a cartoon mascot dancing across your Netscape web browser. You think of it as something that promised a world of software apps that could run on each and every one of your personal machines — from PCs to cellphones — but that ultimately failed in the face of endless security bugs and poor decisions from its creator, Sun Microsystems. “For the general populace,” says LinkedIn principal staff engineer Jay Kreps, “Java is some annoying thing that really out-of-date websites try to make them download.” And if you see it as anything more than that, you probably dismiss it as a way of building stodgy “middleware” tools that connect things like web servers and databases.
But over the past few years, Java has evolved into something very different. It has quietly become the primary foundation for most the net’s largest and most ambitious operations, including Google, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Square, as well as Twitter. “It’s everywhere,” says Krikorian.
“Java is really the only choice when it comes to the requirements for a company like ours — extreme performance requirements and extreme scalability requirements,” Lee says of Square, the San Francisco startup that processes $15 billion a year in credit and debit card transactions via mobile phones and tablets. “There is no viable alternative.”
But there’s a twist to this Java renaissance. It encompasses more than just Java.
That may sound like a paradox, but the thing to realize is that Java isn’t one thing. It’s two. It’s a programming language, a way of writing software code. But it’s also a “virtual machine” that executes code
Originally, the Java virtual machine — aka the JVM — only ran code built with the Java programming language, but today, it runs all sorts of other languages.
So, the web’s big names are using the Java virtual machine as the foundation of their online services, installing the JVM across tens of thousands of servers, and they can then use this base to run code built in myriad languages — from classic Java to a language called Clojure to a new and increasingly popular invention known as Scala — picking just the right tool for the task at hand.
Twitter builds some of its code with the Java programming language, but it fashions the majority with Scala (a language that, for many programmers, lets you create software with an ease that eclipses Java) and a bit with Clojure (a language that feels like Lisp, a way of quickly scripting code that has been a mainstay for decades). LinkedIn mostly uses the Java programming language, while sprinkling in some Scala. But the common denominator is the JVM, software that has been finely tuned over the past fifteen years to run code at speed.
“There are so many different languages that run on it,” Krikorian says. “I only have to worry about tuning and optimizing this one thing, and I can put it on all the hardware we run at Twitter. It’s just easier.”
Ruby Derailed
In 2006, when Twitter built its micro-blogging service with Ruby on Rails, it wasn’t alone. As the web experienced a rebirth in the mid-aughts, the programming tools of the moment were Ruby and PHP, two “dynamically typed” languages that let you build succinct code at an unusually fast clip. But time has shown that these languages just weren’t suited to running the world’s largest web services, and now they’ve taken a backseat to Java — at least on the big stage.
“Ruby on Rails was great to get us to the point where we could make the decision to get off it,” says Krikorian. With Java, he explains, Twitter needs about ten times fewer machines to run its site than it would need with Ruby. And unlike the Rails programming framework, Java and Scala let Twitter readily share and modify its enormous codebase across a team of hundreds of developers.
The Java language isn’t quite as easy to use as Ruby, but for Krikorian and his engineers, Scala is. “Scala seems like a more modern language,” he says. “It makes the transition from Ruby easier — and it’s just more fun.”
The exception that proves the rule is Facebook. Facebook was originally built with PHP, and it still runs on PHP. But to solve the scale problem, the social networking site has taken a page from the Java book, moving its PHP code onto a custom-built virtual machine that provides just-in-time compilation.
Facebook enjoys this sort of in-house hack. But so many others have just moved away from their original languages.
Meanwhile, outside the programming world, Java is still portrayed as security nightmare that no longer runs applications on PCs, laptops, and phones. And there’s some truth to this. Late last year, a spate of new security bugs shined a harsh light on Java as a way of running software on most personal machines.
But thanks to a brand new virtual machine built specifically for mobile devices — Google’s Dalvik virtual machine, the Java language has found new life on Android phones and tablets, where it’s the primary means of building applications. And on servers, it’s helping drive not only big name web services, but countless software applications used inside other businesses.
As an open source project, the JVM is free for everyone to use, and anyone is free to build new software and even new programming languages that run atop it. In the wake of Scala, other developers are building a new language for the JVM called Ceylon, and if you like, you can even run Ruby atop the virtual machine, in the form of something called JRuby.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel says Internet of Things is the next IT game changer
Quark chip means more than smart watches and wearable technology
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2296940/intel-says-internet-of-things-is-the-next-it-game-changer
SAN FRANCISCO: CHIPMAKER Intel expects the Internet of Things to be the next game changer for the IT industry, allowing firms to sift through huge quantities of data via technology such as the chip giant’s upcoming Quark low-power processor.
Doug Fisher, corporate VP and GM of Intel’s Software and Services Group, pictured holding the tiny Quark chip, said that the firm expects to see huge enterprise demand for its Quark processor, although he declined to name specific companies being targeted as customers.
“We’re not doing this out of our own joy,” he said during a media session at the Oracle Openworld show in San Francisco on Monday. “This will be the biggest inflection point for IT for a number of years.”
Fisher said that while technology advancements such as virtualisation and connected computing via networks were important, they were not mission changing, whereas the Internet of Things is a sea change for IT.
Intel unveiled its Quark ultra-small system on chip (SoC) family for wearable technology – which is said to be one fifth of the size of the firm’s current Atom processor and uses a tenth of the power – at its IDF show earlier in September.
The wearable technology aspect – while it has garnered most of the headlines helped by launches such as the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch – forms part of Intel’s plans, but is not the crux of the Quark strategy, said Fisher.
“We’ll innovate around wearable tech. But I’m not worried about hitting every aspect of that, Quark is designed for wearable tech and sensors, for minute types of devices,” Fisher said.
Instead, Intel is much more excited by how the broader internet will be altered by the dominance of sensors, which Fisher said would reach five billion by 2020.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Post-it Note Goes Digital on Evernote
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/25/the-post-it-note-goes-digital-on-evernote/
Rather than fight the digital revolution, the time-tested Post-it note is joining it.
3M Co., which makes about 50 billion of the sticky paper notepads each year, is set to announce a partnership on Thursday with personal-organization app Evernote Corp. Together, they’ve made software that will allow people with smartphones to photograph, store and organize pictures of their Post-its.
Evernote’s software will be able to recognize the sticky notes’ distinctive colors and help organize them within the app.
Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin said he had long coveted the Post-it for its simplicity and ease of use, even as he has spawned a generation of digital-first obsessives. “The Post-it is something we aspire to be,” said Mr. Libin. “They have been a hero product for us.”
It remains to be seen if the new camera function will fully replace Evernote’s digital note-taking functions. It’s not Evernote’s first foray into the physical realm – last year it teamed up with Moleskine SpA to create a line of branded leather notebooks with pages designed to be easily photographed for uploads to the app.
Other old-line industries have tried to adapt to the digital age, for fear of falling victim to it. A slew of digital writing pads and pens that converted handwriting to bytes were unreliable and failed to catch on. Paperless Inc.’s Paperless Post sought to replace the greeting card with emailed digital versions. Though, conceding that old habits are hard to break, Paperless Post last year began selling printed cards.
“Paperless as a concept is stupid,” said Mr. Libin. “The goal is to get rid of stupid uses of paper.”
Tomi says:
Finally: Bill Gates admits Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/gates-harvard/
Bill Gates made many exceptional decisions while he was leading Microsoft to immense success. He did, however, make a few errors.
One of those was the idea of using “Control-Alt-Delete” — initially designed to efficiently reboot a computer — as a way to log into Windows.
Why, when I want to turn on my software and computer, do I need to have three fingers on Control, Alt, Delete?” asked David Rubenstein, Harvard Campaign co-chair. “Whose idea was that?”
Gates then explained why Microsoft decided to implement the command.
“You want to have something you do with the keyboard that is signaling to a very low level of the software — actually hard-coded in the hardware — that it really is bringing in the operating system you expect, instead of just a funny piece of software that puts up a screen that looks like a log-in screen, and then it listens to your password and then it’s able to do that,” Gates said.
The Microsoft co-founder said that there was an option to make a single button for such a command, but the IBM keyboard designer didn’t want to give Microsoft a single button. So Microsoft decided to use “Ctrl+Alt+Del” as a way to log into Windows.
“It was a mistake,” Gates said, drawing a big laugh from the crowd.
David Bradley, a designer of the original IBM PC, is responsible for inventing the “Control-Alt-Delete” command to reboot a system. He famously poked fun at Gates on stage during IBM’s 20th anniversary of the IBM PC.
“I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous,” Bradley said.
tomi says:
Quick fix for very slow to load “Downloads” folder in Windows 7 & 8
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20121202/quick-fix-for-very-slow-to-load-downloads-folder-in-windows-7-8/
After a bit of research, it turns out apparently Windows 7 (and Windows 8) tries to guess-timate what the contents of the folder are and assigns special “rules” to them to optimize the view settings and sorting.
For some reason, the “Downloads” folder likes to be categorized as a “Pictures” folder (I’m guessing because people store a lot of JPGs in it). The problem with this view is that it tries to generate thumbnails for all the files in this folder, even if they’re not pictures.
The fix is to ensure the folder settings for “Downloads” is optimized for “General items”.
Tomi says:
Undiscovered Country of HFT: FPGA JIT Ethernet Packet Assembly
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/09/26/1534210/undiscovered-country-of-hft-fpga-jit-ethernet-packet-assembly
“a company called Argon Design has “developed a high performance trading system” that puts an FPGA — and FPGA-based trading algorithms — right in the Ethernet switch.”
“they actually start assembling and sending out the start of an Ethernet packet simultaneously with receiving and decoding incoming price quotation Ethernet packets, and decide on the fly what to put in the outgoing buy/sell Ethernet packet.”
Groundbreaking Results for High Performance Trading with FPGA and x86 Technologies
http://low-latency.com/article/groundbreaking-results-high-performance-trading-fpga-and-x86-technologies#!
Argon Design, a design services company specializing in complex digital systems has developed a high performance trading system using a heterogeneous mix of technologies to minimize trading latency.
Working with Arista Network’s 7124FX Application Switch which includes an Altera FPGA with hardware-level access to 8 of its 24 10Gb Ethernet ports and an x86 domain based on Intel’s Xeon processors and using the test harness developed for the Finteligent Trading Technology Community program, the latency measured was reduced by a factor of 25 over pure x86 designs tested by the program. For the measured leg in the test harness, latency was reduced from a previous best of 4,600ns to 176ns for algorithmically generated trades executed to the simulated market.
The enhancement in performance was achieved by providing a fast-path where trades are executed directly by the FPGA under the control of trigger rules processed by the x86 based functions. The latency is reduced further by two additional techniques in the FPGA – inline parsing and pre-emption.
As market data enters the switch, the Ethernet frame is parsed serially as bits arrive, allowing partial information to be extracted and matched before the whole frame has been received.
Then, instead of waiting until the end of a potential triggering input packet, pre-emption is used to start sending the overhead part of a response which contains the Ethernet, IP, TCP and FIX headers. This allows completion of an outgoing order almost immediately after the end of the triggering market feed packet.
The overall effect is a dramatic reduction in latency to close to the minimum that is theoretically possible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Leaders believe it-cost growth in Finland
Half of Finnish organizations believe it-their costs to increase this year. Software cost growth believed to fresh respondents, nearly 60 percent of the leaders. At the same time, equipment costs, and communications were also found decreasing trends.
Survey done by Market Vision estimates in the previous rapo Finnish IT overall market growth this year to 2.1 per cent. Includes evaluation of services, hardware and software.
Market-Visio analyst Leena Mäntysaari the IT sector is one of the few sectors in Finland, which currently show the growth curve. IT procurement at higher efficiency and competitiveness, and hence savings.
IT services will focus on the most commonly integration and application development. Transition to the cloud environment will show in integration costs.
One in five believed that the unit cost savings in the future. PC desktops, printers and copiers acquired from the leaders in terms of money less. Telecommunications side of saving money with a bit of fixed-mobile network costs.
The unit contracts, the money charged tablet computers – one in ten believed that the tablet costs to rise more than 20 per cent. Although the tablets prices would decline, so they are as much use of the full costs seem to be increasing.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/johtajat+uskovat+itkulujen+kasvuun+suomessa/a933803
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Project Spark Makes a Game of Creating Your Own Video Game
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=268157&cid=nl.dn14
Video games have become a large part of today’s culture. Some parents find that their kids spend more time in front of the TV playing video games than doing anything else. According to Jane McGonigal, an American game designer and author, “currently there are more than a half a billion people worldwide playing computer and video games at least an hour a day — and a 183 million in the US alone. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be a gamer — 99 percent of boys under 18 and 94 percent of girls under 18 report playing video games regularly.”
At one point or another, almost all these young minds playing video games have wondered what it would be like to create their own game, even if it was just changing something small to make their gaming experience better. With the release of new consoles later this year, that idea is going to become a reality. Known as Project Spark, Microsoft is trying to make it easier than ever to create your own game by turning that process into a game itself.
Similar creations allowing enthusiasts to create their own games exist, but many are strictly limited to working from a PC — most notably Game Maker, Flixel, RPG Maker, and Twine. Project Spark will be the first of this type released to a console system.
Players will easily be able to create their own worlds, characters, and actions, then play through their own game. The Kinect is going to be available for use in creating games with the Xbox One. Players will be able to take images of themselves or their friends and use them in a game. Users can also record their own action moves, which can then be integrated into the game.
Tomi says:
ABI Research: Android taking over the tablet market from iOS
http://www.phonearena.com/news/ABI-Research-Android-taking-over-the-tablet-market-from-iOS_id47802
According to ABI Research, there has been a change in the global tablet market. The Apple iPad, which has been credited with creating the tablet category with the launch of the OG version in 2010, has “passed the baton to the Android ecosystem,” according to the research firm. And there are three reasons why this seems to be the case.
ABI points out that for the first time ever, the second quarter of 2013 saw Android slates out sell the Apple iPad with 14.5 million iOS flavored slabs rung up in the three month period, compared to 30.5 million Android tablets sold in the same period. Secondly, those companies manufacturing Android tablets captured a majority of the revenue for the first time, although it was by the thinnest of margins. Of the $12.7 billion of revenue that was generated by tablet sales in Q2, the Apple iPad was responsible for slightly less than 50% of that figure. Consider the small share for Windows RT and Windows Pro tablets, and the figures show Android slabs now leading the way with more than half of the world’s tablet sales by revenue.
Tomi says:
7 service requests that make IT support folks cry
http://www.networkworld.com/slideshow/121315/7-service-requests-that-make-it-support-folks-cry.html
Every day, in organizations around the globe, the IT team supports requests that range from common usage requirements to the downright bizarre. When you work in IT, you move from one fire, to putting out to the next. But sometimes, those requests and emergencies just make one want to scream. CSO reached out to a few sources for stories about support incidents that made security managers and IT folks cry.
Forwarding malicious attachments
Port confusion
Sticky reminders
Virtual headache
Laptop lending
DVD deviation
Server slip-up
Tomi says:
RMS On Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/09/29/0339251/rms-on-why-free-software-is-more-important-now-than-ever-before
an article by Richard Stallman following up on the 30th anniversary of the start of his efforts on the GNU Project. RMS explains why he thinks we should continue to push for broader adoption of free software principles.
Tomi says:
Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before
By Richard Stallman
09.28.13
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/why-free-software-is-more-important-now-than-ever-before/
Tomi Engdahl says:
PC gaming’s future is no longer tied to Microsoft
http://www.gamesradar.com/pc-gamings-future-no-longer-tied-microsoft/
First there was SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system whose open design aims to spur innovation. Then there were Steam Machines, a range of Valve-branded systems with SteamOS pre-installed that will provide a legitimate non-Windows alternative for PC gamers come 2014. Now, Valve has concluded its trio of announcements with a joystick-less Steam controller, a bizarre-looking (but admirably forward-thinking) input device that allows any Steam game to be played wirelessly from the comfort of your couch.
Taken at face value, these three announcements appear to be nothing more than an attempt by Valve to elbow its way into your living room, hoping its Steam Machines will earn a place alongside your set-top box or gaming consoles. That is, at least, part of the goal, especially considering PC sales continue to diminish each year. But I think there’s a significantly more important conclusion to be derived from these announcements. By offering a free OS alternative, one that comes pre-installed on a wide variety of gaming rigs, Valve is attempting the unthinkable: to offer a PC gaming future that isn’t inextricably bound to Microsoft.
the ideological differences between Valve and Microsoft, the former emphasizing the value of open platforms, while the latter seems to be transitioning into a closed one.
Yes, all of these things–the SteamOS, Steam Machines, the controller–are an attempt to sell you something, but to think of that “thing” as just another gaming machine for the living room is incredibly shortsighted. What Valve is really selling is an alternative future for PC gaming, one that diverges from the whims of Microsoft. This path is an ideological one as much as it’s motivated by turning a dollar.
But Valve has some immense hurdles to overcome if it’s to be successful. Can it convince big publishers to port their games to Linux, an operating system that has a remarkably small presence in the gaming space? Perhaps once Valve gives every Steam member the opportunity to beta test SteamOS, we’ll see some of the bigger players raise their eyebrows. Then again, perhaps not.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Google Converted Language Translation Into a Problem of Vector Space Mathematics
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519581/how-google-converted-language-translation-into-a-problem-of-vector-space-mathematics/
To translate one language into another, find the linear transformation that maps one to the other. Simple, say a team of Google engineers
Computer science is changing the nature of the translation of words and sentences from one language to another. Anybody who has tried BabelFish or Google Translate will know that they provide useful translation services but ones that are far from perfect.
The basic idea is to compare a corpus of words in one language with the same corpus of words translated into another. Words and phrases that share similar statistical properties are considered equivalent.
The problem, of course, is that the initial translations rely on dictionaries that have to be compiled by human experts and this takes significant time and effort.
Now Tomas Mikolov and a couple of pals at Google in Mountain View have developed a technique that automatically generates dictionaries and phrase tables that convert one language into another.
The new technique does not rely on versions of the same document in different languages. Instead, it uses data mining techniques to model the structure of a single language and then compares this to the structure of another language.
“This method makes little assumption about the languages, so it can be used to extend and refine dictionaries and translation tables for any language pairs,” they say
The new approach is relatively straightforward. It relies on the notion that every language must describe a similar set of ideas, so the words that do this must also be similar.
The new trick is to represent an entire language using the relationship between its words. The set of all the relationships, the so-called “language space”, can be thought of as a set of vectors that each point from one word to another.
It turns out that different languages share many similarities in this vector space. That means the process of converting one language into another is equivalent to finding the transformation that converts one vector space into the other.
This turns the problem of translation from one of linguistics into one of mathematics. So the problem for the Google team is to find a way of accurately mapping one vector space onto the other. For this they use a small bilingual dictionary compiled by human experts–comparing same corpus of words in two different languages gives them a ready-made linear transformation that does the trick.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Valve’s Crazy ‘Steam Controller’ Reinvent the Gamepad?
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/09/steam-controller/
As part of its quest to bring PC gaming into the living room, Valve now wants to totally reinvent the gamepad.
Steam Controllers won’t have a D-pad or an analog joystick, the two constant features of nearly every standard game controller since 1983. Instead, it will feature two trackpads.
“The trackpads allow far higher fidelity input than has previously been possible with traditional handheld controllers,” Valve wrote on the announcement page. “Steam gamers, who are used to the input associated with PCs, will appreciate that the Steam Controller’s resolution approaches that of a desktop mouse. Whole genres of games that were previously only playable with a keyboard and mouse are now accessible from the sofa.”
While the dual trackpads are certainly the most visually striking and fundamentally transformative elements of the new controller, Valve did not stop there. It added a touchscreen in the middle of the controller. There’s advanced force feedback, which it calls a “higher-bandwidth haptic information channel than exists in any other consumer product that we know of.” It’s symmetrical, so that left-handed and right-handed players will never find themselves at a disadvantage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple warns: “Do not use in nuclear power plants or weapons systems”
Apple’s iOS operating system is not suitable, for example, or nuclear power plant is operated by weapon systems, the company warns of contract.
System conditions explains more generally, that iOS is not suitable for situations where the system provided by the false information such as time of day, other data or application problems could lead to death, personal injury, or serious damage to the environment, for example.
More specifically, the company determines that the phone does not leave the responsibility of the nuclear power plants, aircraft navigation or air traffic control, life support systems and weapons systems operations.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/apple+varoittaa+quotei+saa+kayttaa+ydinvoimaloissa+tai+asejarjestelmissaquot/a934577
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simplicity is beautiful in overall architecture
Enterprise Architecture is once again recently raised its head in many areas. In particular, public administration background information management is a new law that requires the use of enterprise architecture.
But even in the private sector, new opportunities for information technology and business digitalisation have increased the complexity of the situation, and architecture have only been introduced to search for the clarity.
Different architecture frame give the structures that architecture work brought a variety of more specific elements of the organization’s activities, information content, applications, and technologies.
But many times, this work is the technical results of the assembly level, and it does not achieve the main objective – a clear response to the correct timing IT investments.
The key to successful overall architecture is, in fact, the overall mission and vision of the organization’s current state.
Such an approach usually found in the organization’s strategy, but its translation into IT for their choices usually requires more complicated choices.
Typically, these choices can only be made of the organization’s top management, and information management task is then to make these choices in a sufficiently clear way out.
An example of such a principle could be the next bit of simplified selection:
Information Map sets the basis for the organization’s core operations support systems. On other systems, priority is lower and their development projects, flexible if necessary.
This principle is in itself a very simple, but when thinking about the impact of IT investment level, then the effects are significant: it gives direct answers to a variety of projects for the prioritization and resource management.
These principles raise the table and deciding upon is certainly difficult, but it is also essential if we are to move to a truly business-controlled model.
If, however, such a choice is not made, then the information management is in constant agony if all the projects feel important, and the most votes all those concerned with typically receive more bandwidth than the other.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/blogit/ict_standard_forum/yksinkertaisuus+on+kaunista+kokonaisarkkitehtuurissa/a934557
Tomi Engdahl says:
PMBus Spec working group issues version 1.3 for review
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/power-system-management-design/4421731/PMBus-Spec-working-group-issues-version-1-3
The PMBus Specification Working Group has released the PMBus 1.3 specification proposal for adopter review. The updated specification adds features and improves performance of PMBus 1.2 and adds AVS Bus (Part III). If the Working Group achieves its goals, the new specification will complete its review process and be approved in early 2014
1MHz Bus Speed
The faster bus gives a 2.5X communication improvement that is backwards compatible with 100kHz and 400kHz PMBus devices.
Floating Point Data Format
Floating Point is IEEE 754 Half Precision (16 bit). When implemented, all PMBus commands will use Floating Point. The goal was to create a consistent format (all commands) that is easy to convert to data types used by programmers. Programmers will typically use 32 bit floats, and conversion from half precision to single precision is simply mapping bits, a truncation/rounding operation, or extending zeros. Floating point also supports NaN and +/-Inf. NaN indicates a slave could not deliver a meaningful value, eliminating the need to NACK a request.
Most existing firmware converts percentages (margin, fault high/low) to absolute values. Relative Voltage Thresholds allows firmware to program all output voltage related values in percent of the output voltage.
New Part III
The proposed specification contains a whole new Part III for AVSBus (Adaptive Voltage Scaling). The purpose of AVS is to enable an ASIC, FPGA, or Processor to change the voltage of its supply by sending commands to a POL (Point of Load Converter). In addition, AVS provides for reading back voltage and current of the POL. The AVS algorithm used is typically a proprietary control loop implemented by the system designer. The purpose of AVS is to achieve the highest performance while using the least energy. AVSBus is a communication protocol standard to enable AVS in a system.
The AVSBus is best understood as a SPI bus without Chip Select (CS). The protocol uses Start and CRC sub-frames that allows a slave (POL) to discover the beginning and end of frames without CS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Industrial ATX mainboard supports 3rd Gen Intel Core processor and Windows 8
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4421600/Industrial-ATX-mainboard-supports-3rd-Gen-Intel-Core-processor-and-Windows-8
The D3128-B2x industrial ATX mainboard from Fujitsu now supports 3rd Gen Intel Core processors from the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 product family and Intel Xeon processor E5-1600 v2 product family as well as Intel Core i7 4800/4900 product family with LGA2011 sockets, based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture.
By supporting the Intel vPro technology, systems based on the mainboard allow remote maintenance using an Intel GbE LAN Controller with Intel Advanced Management Technology 8.1/DASH 1.1, regardless of the state of the operating system. This so-called out-of-band manageability makes it easier to diagnose and fix problems, especially those that occur in systems that are operating in places difficult to access. In order to support this functionality, Fujitsu ships the board with a demo version of the remote management solution AMI Megarac XMS by American Megatrends.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why the blue screen of death no longer plagues Windows users
http://www.zdnet.com/why-the-blue-screen-of-death-no-longer-plagues-windows-users-7000021327/
Summary: The dreaded blue screen of death is familiar to any long time Windows PC user, but Microsoft has been developing tools to keep the dreaded BSOD at bay.
Remember the blue screen of death, a Windows PC’s way of telling you it had suffered an error so catastrophic it couldn’t carry on anymore?
How Microsoft stamped on driver errors
Teams in Microsoft’s Windows division developed algorithms that took in driver-related crash reports from XP users and automatically categorised them by driver vendor and the likely cause.
The goal for Microsoft was to figure out which drivers were causing problems and what the most common fatal mistakes were.
Microsoft established there were three ways that device drivers commonly tripped up Windows XP.
First was drivers breaking APIs in the Windows OS that handle communications between the Windows kernel and the driver. An example of this is a driver twice calling the Windows kernel API IoCompleteRequest, which caused Windows to crash.
The second major cause of errors was memory corruption, where memory is not correctly allocated for data structures needed by the driver. The third was drivers hanging the system after getting caught in an infinite loop.
To reduce the number of buggy device drivers, Microsoft embarked on what it called “data-driven program verification”. This is a process whereby “you model a computer program as a mathematical system and the goal is to build tools that find proofs of correctness using mathematics and logic”, said Cook.
“The goal is to build tools that automatically find proofs of correctness rather than just enumerating all the possible test cases”, thereby accelerating the rate at which bugs can be stamped out.
The team developed a termination prover for Windows device drivers called Terminator, which works on device drivers up to 35,000 lines of code. Terminator helped uncover a number of bugs in Windows XP, for example unplugging a mouse while moving it would cause XP to hang the system, as the OS would get stuck walking the I/O request queue forever.
Cook said the stability of recent Windows OS, such as Windows 7 and 8, has benefited from Microsoft’s work on stablising drivers.
In recent years sightings of the BSOD have become less common in Windows operating systems, as Microsoft has stamped out some of the rogue code commonly responsible.
At a recent event in Cambridge Microsoft talked about how it had reduced misbehaving code in its operating system, using automated tools and a huge amount of crash reports from Windows XP users.
The main cause of crashes in Windows XP was device drivers, which were responsible for some 85 percent of hiccups in the OS. Drivers are the code that allow an operating system to control a hardware device, such as a video card, handling commands between the device and the core of an operating system, the kernel.
Drivers can be particularly difficult to debug, as their code will be written by different companies and is generally not open source, so is opaque to Microsoft. Their interactions can also be rather complex, with drivers commonly interoperating with a stack of other drivers.
“There’s an exponentially growing number of device drivers in the ecosystem and they’re written typically not by Microsoft but by our partners,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel to acquire Australian tech company Sensory Networks for $21 million
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/intel-to-acquire-australian-tech-company-sensory-networks-for-21-million-20131001-hv1un.html
Sensory Networks, which creates pattern matching and acceleration software technology, agreed to sell to Intel for about $US20 million ($21.5 million), a source familiar with the matter said.
All of Sensory Networks’ employees are expected to join Intel, another source said.
Sensory Network’s pattern matching and acceleration software technology is used in firewalls and to detect email spam and viruses, among other things.
Sensory Networks began as a hardware business but became software-focused in 2009.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big data: You’ve got to spend a dollar … to make fifty-two cents – report
Maybe it’s not the gold mine the hype-sters thought it was
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/01/half_big_data_projects_fail/
What do you expect from big data mining: easy-to-find gold nuggets of information from the dark pits of the data dumps? According to a recent report from the Wikibon consulting group, almost half of big data projects fail.
It also found that the payoffs – using current technology – are not yet worth the costs of running the projects.
Here’s what the open-sourced consultancy has to say:
In a recent survey, 46 per cent of Big Data practitioners report that they have only realised partial value from their Big Data deployments. An unfortunate 2 per vent declared their Big Data deployments total failures, with no value achieved.
Why? Wikibon sees three reasons
Not enough skilled Big Data practitioners
“Raw” and relatively immature technology
A lack of compelling business use case
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scribd Launches a Global ‘Spotify For eBooks’
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/01/1912236/scribd-launches-a-global-spotify-for-ebooks
Tomi Engdahl says:
CERN releases retro ‘Line Mode’ browser
Surfing like it’s 1992
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/02/cern_releases_retro_line_mode_browser/
The history-conscious chaps at CERN have wound back the clock to 1992 by releasing a “line-mode browser” emulator.
Reg readers doubtless recall that the first web browsers were text-only affairs, until a young fellow called Marc Andreessen had the bright idea that lots more people could be interested by the World Wide Web if only it had a graphical user interface.
The results of that insight are history, but CERN is determined to ensure that the Web’s early days don’t go un-recorded. One of its efforts to ensure that’s the case is the line-mode browser emulator which offers the chance to surf like it is 1992 and is available here.
http://line-mode.cern.ch/www/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steam Controller: Open and Hackable?
http://hackaday.com/2013/10/01/steam-controller-open-and-hackable/
The folks over at Valve Corporation have been busy. Just this week they have made three announcements regarding the future of their company; SteamOS, a linux-based operating system, Steam Machines (for running SteamOS), and the one we’re most interested in, the Steam Controller, an open controller. Not to worry though, the controller is not exclusive to the Steam Machines!
“The Steam Controller was designed from the ground up to be hackable … We plan to make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects”
Steam Controller: A different kind of gamepad
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/