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:
Dell Ad Says Windows 8.1 Apps Will Run On Xbox One
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/10/22/0035214/dell-ad-says-windows-81-apps-will-run-on-xbox-one
“While many people scoffed at or failed to recognized the significance of Microsoft Corp.’s talk of a “unified” development path for Windows, Xbox, and Windows Phone, the real world ramifications of that approach are now becoming clear — and they’re significant”
A Microsoft spokesperson told AllThingsD, ‘The suggestion that all Windows 8 apps run on Xbox One is not accurate,” but they didn’t deny that there would be some cross-compatibility.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forget the Stereotype: Profile of an IT Worker
Most of them don’t have college degrees in computer science, technology, engineering or mat
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052702303442004579123283162644524
Who are these employees who install new computers, keep the corporate network running and help other workers reset their passwords? Cultural stereotypes about nerds with pocket protectors aside, what do we know about the people who keep the bits flowing and the digital lights on?
For instance, the IT guy—and they’re about three times more likely to be men than women—doesn’t necessarily have a computer-science degree. About a third come to IT with degrees in business, social sciences or other nontechnical fields. More than 40% of computer support specialists and a third of computer systems administrators don’t have a college degree at all.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/why-does-windows-have-terrible-battery-life.html
I’ve become a huge fan of touch computing. I believe that most things we think of as “computers” will be de-facto tablets, either in our pocket, in our hands, possibly even mounted on our wrists or forearms.
My main complaint with the Surface Pro is the incredibly lackluster battery life. Granted, this is a classic Intel x86 box we’re talking about, not some efficient ARM system-on-a-chip designed to run on a tiny battery. Still, I was hopeful that the first Surface Pro with Haswell inside would produce giant gains in battery life as Intel promised. Then I saw this graph
So WiFi web browsing battery life, arguably the most common user activity there is on a computer these days, goes from 4.7 hours on the Surface Pro to 6.7 hours on the Surface Pro 2, a 42% increase.
The Surface Pro 2 has a 42 Wh battery, which puts it closer to the 11 inch Air in capacity. Still, over 11 hours of battery life browsing the web on WiFi? That means the Air is somehow producing nearly two times the battery efficiency of the best hardware and software combination Microsoft can muster, for what I consider to be the most common usage pattern on a computer today. That’s shocking. Scandalous, even.
That’s fine, I knew about this discrepancy, but here’s what really bothers me:
1. The Windows light usage battery life situation has not improved at all since 2009. If anything the disparity between OS X and Windows light usage battery life has gotten worse.
2. Microsoft positions Windows 8 as an operating system that’s great for tablets, which are designed for casual web browsing and light app use – but how can that possibly be true when Windows idle power management is so much worse than the competition’s desktop operating system in OS X – much less their tablet and phone operating system, iOS?
Instead of the 26% less battery life in Windows that Anand measured in 2009, we’re now seeing 50% less battery life. This is an enormous gap between Windows and OS X in what is arguably the most common form of computer usage today, basic WiFi web browsing. That’s shameful. Embarrassing, even.
Apple is clearly doing a great job here.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The general perception is that IT projects often go wrong in one way or another. If you did not disappoint schedule or budget, then the end result is something other than was desired. Too often we go wrong in all the three points.
“Almost all of the company’s development projects will change at some point in the system’s old either change or get a new one. At this point, it should be according to the lead and the work may be given to bit hackers, which is perhaps more interested in the latest technology as a whole. If the company still communication and project into practice are factors that are trivial, will easily go in the wrong direction “, Information Technology Association of Robert Seren says Editor in an interview.
He sees a great challenge to corporate management and IT management in the development of interaction. Quite simple things and the right kind of leadership can be a lot of positive time.
He points out that under the leadership of the business and IT leadership often have different views on how to start using the new technology within the company.
The acquired business benefits of improved productivity, job satisfaction, and so on are hard to measure.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/ttl_n_ser_n_projektit_onnistumaan_vuorovaikutuksella
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Is Losing Teens, And New Privacy Settings Won’t Bring Them Back
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/10/19/facebook-is-losing-teens-and-new-privacy-settings-wont-bring-them-back/
There’s no question that Facebook is quickly losing teenage users to other social networks. In February, Facebook admitted in its annual 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was aware that younger users were less engaged with the social network than previously.
In fact, many teens attest to the fact they are abandoning Facebook.
Karp wrote that all of her friends are using Instagram and Snapchat, and she only has a Facebook account herself “just to see what it was all about. I soon discovered that Facebook is useless without friends. My only friend is, like, my grandma.”
But Facebook is apparently desperate to keep teenagers and bring back those who have left in droves. Earlier this week, it made a major change to its privacy policy for its 13-17 year-old users (whom must agree to a different privacy policy and have different settings than adult users).
Unfortunately, a simple privacy setting is not Facebook’s problem. Today’s teens are primarily mobile users, spending the majority of their time on their phones and tablets. If teens are using Facebook, it’s via Facebook’s mobile app. Compared to other social apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook’s app is cumbersome and simply posting an update just takes too much time for these teens. While teens might be spending more time on their phones and tablets than you and me, they don’t want to spend extra time navigating through apps to do what they want. Remember – this generation was raised on technology and doesn’t know life without it. The experience that apps such as Snapchat and Instagram delivers has created an expectation of instant gratification for teens that the current Facebook app just can’t meet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
USB Implementers Forum Says No to Open Source
http://hackaday.com/2013/10/22/usb-implementers-forum-says-no-to-open-source/
For the longest time. one of the major barriers to hobbyists and very small companies selling hardware with a USB port is the USB Implementers Forum. Each USB device sold requires a vendor ID (VID) and a product ID (PID) to be certified as USB compliant. Adafruit, Sparkfun, and the other big guys in the hobbyist market have all paid the USB Implementers Forum for a USB VID, but that doesn’t help the guy in his garage hoping to sell a few hundred homebrew USB devices.
ince other USB device vendors such as Microchip and FTDI give away USB PIDs for free, a not for profit foundation could buy a VID, give PIDs away to foundation members making open source hardware
This idea did not sit well with VTM Group
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Announces iPad Air—Dramatically Thinner, Lighter & More Powerful iPad
iPad mini Features Stunning Retina Display & 64-bit Apple-designed A7 Chip
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/23Apple-Announces-iPad-Air-Dramatically-Thinner-Lighter-More-Powerful-iPad.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
All Of The Ways Apple’s New Free Mac OS Hurts Microsoft Windows
http://www.fastcompany.com/3020524/all-of-the-ways-apples-new-free-mac-os-hurts-microsoft-windows
Apple announced today that Mavericks, its latest version of Mac OS X, will be free for all Mac users to download. Windows 8.1 is still $119.99.
Apple products are usually seen as expensive if not out of reach for average consumers; rarely are they associated with being free. But today the company took a big step toward changing that perception at a splashy event in Cupertino. “For the last several years, we’ve been on a mission,” Apple SVP Craig Federighi said on stage, “[and] today we’re going to revolutionize pricing.”
Traditionally, PC and software makers have made significant revenue from either licensing OS software or using it to attract new customers to purchase hardware upgrades. Whereas mobile software has typically been offered for free–there’s no charge to upgrade from iOS 6 to iOS 7, for example–Apple and Microsoft have long charged fees for upgrades to Mac OS and Windows
The previous iteration of OS X, Mountain Lion, cost $19.99; Microsoft’s Windows 8 can cost anywhere from $119.99 to $199.99.
Today, Apple blew up that antiquated model, bringing its desktop operating system pricing in line with its mobile OS. Now, even if you’re on an OS as old as Snow Leopard or on a device purchased in 2007, you can still “in a single step update…to Mavericks” for no charge, Federighi said, adding, “Free is good.”
For Apple, the benefits likely outweigh the downsides. While Apple generated revenue from selling OS X, it had been lowering the price of the product over the last few years in order to goose downloads. By offering it for free, Apple will potentially further mitigate issues of fragmentation. When more and more users upgrade to Mavericks, because it’s free, Apple users will more and more operate on the same standard, enhancing the platform’s security while boosting app compatibility.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple unveils Haswell-based MacBook Pros with Retina display, starting at $1,299 (update: non-Retina 15-inch is gone)
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/22/apple-unveils-haswell-based-macbook-pros-with-retina-display/
If you’ve been waiting for the MacBook Pro with Retina display to get a big processor upgrade, today’s your lucky day. Apple has just refreshed its high-end portable line with Intel’s Haswell chips, delivering Iris graphics and battery life improvements much like those from the recent MacBook Air update.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Debuts Parental Controls For Chrome & Chromebook Computers With A “Supervised Users” Feature, Now In Beta
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/22/google-debuts-parental-controls-for-chrome-chromebook-computers-with-supervised-users-feature-now-in-beta/
oogle is officially beginning to roll out parental controls in its Chrome web browser in the form of a new “Supervised Users” feature that is live now in the beta channel for early testing ahead of its expected public release. The option allows a user, most likely a parent, to lock down the Chrome browser running on their device in order to allow and block access to certain websites, enable SafeSearch for filtering Google search results, and maintain a history of the websites visited, among other things.
The “Supervised Users” option has been in testing for some time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google fires fresh salvo in war on web filth: Chrome Supervised Users. Oh yes
Aw, come on, dad, can I look at 4chan pleeeeeaaase?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/23/chrome_supervised_users/
In the never-ending quest to shield impressionable minds from some of the internet’s less family-friendly content, Google has unveiled “supervised users” for Chrome on Windows, OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS.
A supervised user is a special class of Chrome user account that’s created and controlled by another user who acts as its “manager,” such as a parole officer parent.
By default, a supervised user has all of the same permissions that any other Chrome user has, but additional restrictions can be assigned at the manager’s discretion. For example, certain sites can be blocked, or the supervised user’s account can be set to a whitelist configuration so that it can only visit approved sites.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nice job, technology. Now we have to work FIVE TIMES HARDER
Now that your phone is a computer, you’re never off the clock
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/23/technology_has_made_us_work_five_times_harder/
Researchers have claimed that modern technology has made workers almost five times more tired productive than they were in the ’70s.
A business report painted this as entirely good news, hailing the fact that workers are now chained to their smartphones or fondleslabs and can work around the clock.
In a paper called the “Individual Productivity Report”, analysts from the O2 Business and the Centre for Economic and Business Research claimed there had been a 480 per cent rise in “ICT-related labour productivity” between 1972 and 2012, compared to a relatively meagre growth of 84 per cent for overall labour productivity.
Tech-driven productivity will go up even further, the report continued, driven by high speed mobile internet access and tablet computers, allowing wage slaves to put nose to grindstone wherever they happen to be.
The researchers predicted that tech-related productivity would soar by 22 per cent between 2012 and 2020, or 2.5 per cent a year.
“Employers have been able to condense work-flows among fewer workers. The result is fewer secretaries taking diction, for example, and more managers dealing with their own administration in emails and exchanging documents online.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle Laser Lights Way to Silicon Photonics
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319871&
Oracle Labs is developing a low-power laser it hopes will be a key enabler for silicon photonics. The computer company could announce the status of its work within a few months.
Oracle says silicon photonics will soon be used to link chips in high-end server cards and racks at 25 Gbit/s. It envisions a macrochip, a wafer-scale server motherboard where all major chips on the card are linked via silicon photonics. The technology is critical for plans to get power consumption on petaflop supercomputers down from 556 KW today to about 85 KW.
“Over the next five years, all [server] links will become exclusively photonic at 25G or perhaps slightly faster,” A.V. Krishnamoorthy, a chief technologist for photonics at Oracle, said in a keynote at a server design event
VCSELs are widely used today and will continue to be used, particularly in active optical cables, but “in the end, it will all be silicon photonics simply because of the need for integration and density.”
Oracle worked closely with the component providers Kotura (now part of Mellanox) and Luxtera in a DARPA program on silicon photonics. Over multiple generaitons of designs, it got all the silicon photonics down to a target of 0.7 picojoule/bit, except for the laser, which consumed 1.4 pj/bit by itself
“We are really focused now on getting more efficient silicon-assisted lasers,”
Intel has been developing silicon photonics in its labs for a decade. This year, it said it will soon deliver 100G links for computer servers. Cisco Systems is also in the hunt. It has acquired a silicon photonics startup and has discussed using 2.5-D chip stacks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SkySQL Raises $20M To Support Open-Source Relational Database MariaDB
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/22/skysql-raises-20m-to-support-open-source-relational-database-mariadb/
SkySQL has raised $20 million to deepen its support for MariaDB, the fast growing open-source relational database and the emerging database of choice for Wikipedia. The round was led by Intel Capital with participation from California Technology Ventures, Finnish Industry Investment, Open Ocean Capital and Spintop Private Partners.
Until late this year, MariaDB had primarily been an engineering project but this year it emerged as a foundation SQL technology for Wikipedia and major Linux distributions such as Fedora and OpenSuse, said SkySQL CEO Patrik Sallner. The round validates SkySQL’s approach to make MariaDB, the fastest-growing open-source database and considered the premiere alternative to MySQL.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Foundation adopts Open Virtualization Alliance and KVM
http://www.zdnet.com/linux-foundation-adopts-open-virtualization-alliance-and-kvm-7000022281/
Summary: The Linux Foundation used to be just about Linux. Now it’s also directly backiing virtualization with support for Linux and the Open Virtualization Alliance’s KVM.
In Edinburgh, Scotland at the European LinuxCon the Linux Foundation announced that the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) is becoming a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.
ova-logo
The OVA is dedicated to Linux’s own built-in virtualization system: the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM). This, in turn, runs on x86 hardware that supports the Intel VT or AMD-V virtualization extensions. IBM is also porting KVM to its Power architecture.
KVM is made up a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, which provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU (a fast X86 emulator). It’s been in the main Linux kernel since the 2.6.20 release.
Technically, KVM’s been very successful and it’s quite popular with developers. Still, KVM has had trouble gaining commercial success against its Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX virtualization rivals. Hence, the OVA was founded by HP, Intel, IBM, and Red Hat in 2010.
Tomi Engdahl says:
American embarrassment of self-flop – “no chance of success”
Finns do not have to be alone off the ground progressing left-it-with their projects. There are problems elsewhere, and according to statistics, the failure is more the rule than the exception.
Last received a lot of attention to the flop is the U.S. health care reform website healthcare.gov project, which has been in deep trouble after the announcement of the beginning of October. The site has, among other things, crashes due to excessive load. The project had the original price tag of 93 million euros, but of late the budget has already been exceeded briskly.
According to experts, Barack Obama’s administration should not be surprised by the poor success of the project. The Standish Group has collected data on a total of up to 50 000 different millions of decent IT project and its results seem dismal.
Of all the more than $ 10 million, or about 7.3 million in personnel costs which produces only 6.4 per cent of the project was calculated to be successful. More than half faced a number of difficulties such as budget and schedule overruns, and over 40 per cent had to be because of problems with the wells completely.
“They did not have any chance,” says Standish founder Jim Johnson project.
“The success of the project was extremely unlikely, they had only about six per cent chance,” Johnson believes.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/amerikkalaisten+nolo+itfloppi++quotei+mitaan+mahdollisuutta+onnistuaquot/a941052
Tomi Engdahl says:
Torvalds: SteamOS Will ‘Really Help’ Linux On the Desktop
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/184236/torvalds-steamos-will-really-help-linux-on-the-deskto
Tomi Engdahl says:
Next-Gen GPU Progress Slowing As It Aims for 20 nm and Beyond
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/211234/next-gen-gpu-progress-slowing-as-it-aims-for-20-nm-and-beyond
“AMD may be releasing a new 28-nm Hawaii chip in the next few days, but it is still based on the same 28-nm process that the original HD 7970 debuted on nearly two years ago. Quick and easy (relative terms) process node transitions are probably a thing of the past. 20-nm lines applicable to large ASICs are not being opened until mid-2014.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT’s two faces
Two-tier companies. Studies show that ten per cent increase in the digitization of society increases 0.75 per cent of gross domestic product growth.
The same trend applies to businesses and productivity. IT-intensive firms’ productivity is on average better than it: the less making use of business productivity.
The thing is, however, ambiguous. It: s use are either really productive on the one hand, or even worse than other companies.
Information technology investment, therefore, can significantly improve the productivity, but at worst, weaken it. Why is this so?
This has opened up a new era. Ironically, however, to say that because we are human beings, so the better the data, however, never fully replace the Hippo method (highest paid person opinion) but in the best case, to improve it.
Automation. Many tasks based on processes that can be treated, at least in part, a machine to automate. Machines do not get tired, and do not make mistakes. In addition, the efficiency of machines is often superior.
This change tasks. Most probably not bother me that the primary production accounted for only three per cent of GDP. Primary production required by the labor market has shifted to the processing and services.
Similarly, the automation of industrial processes move towards service processes. This leaves room for new needs and through new tasks, including humans. Buyers are eternal.
Sharing of information. A large part of the people, businesses and the functioning of society is based on the sharing of information and its utilization.
Digitalization, networking and powerful search engines make it possible for us to apply for an instant almost any type of information.
Time and place. Ict release, as well as a lot of people at work and leisure time, time and place.
Teleworking, mobility, e-commerce and, say, a continuously updated documentation distributed not only to increase efficiency but also increase people’s everyday lives.
Nordic wilds can be made not only a world-class things, but also to implement a global service.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/blogit/CIO_100_blogi/itn+kahdet+kasvot/a941087
Tomi Engdahl says:
Visual Studio 2013 now available for download
http://blogs.technet.com/b/firehose/archive/2013/10/17/visual-studio-2013-now-available-for-download.aspx
On Thursday, S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, announced that the final releases of Visual Studio 2013, .NET 4.5.1, and Team Foundation Server 2013 are now available for download.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Uh oh, Los Angeles School District’s $30 million iPad program falls flat
http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/24/uh-oh-los-angeles-school-districts-30-million-ipad-program-falls-flat/
In North Carolina when 73,000 Amplify tablets arrived — from Robert Murdoch’s edtech company — a good chunk of them were shattered and labeled “dangerous.” The program got discontinued.
In Texas, a consultant review of the science program iAchieve, that 70,000 students were doing on iPads, found it didn’t meet curriculum standards, and students weren’t learning what they were supposed to. The program was discontinued.
At the time I said, “Uh oh, this doesn’t bode well for the Los Angeles School District, which just ordered $30 million worth of $700 retina display iPads for its students.” School districts and tablet providers are screwing up the execution of what otherwise sounded pretty cool.
Well, one week after I posed the question we’ve got the answer. The LA School district iPad program is already in the shitter.
There’s a handful of problems. For one thing, the LA Times is reporting that an updated school budget shows the price of each iPad is $100 higher than officials initially reported. I.e. the money budgeted for the iPads will now buy a lot less iPads.
There’s also the additional costs, previously undiscussed, of computer carts to keep the tablets safe, keyboards for taking standardized tests on the tablets, and the purchasing of an online course system.
So, problem no. 1: the budget is already out of control.
Problem no. 2, also reported by the LA Times: 300 hundred students who got their hands on the iPads wasted no time in disassembling the firewall installed to keep them from accessing super fun sites like Facebook, YouTube, and YouPorn. Shocker! Who didn’t see that coming from a mile away?
On the bright side I guess the LA school district can pat itself on the back for having such resourceful and independent students. On the other, slightly less bright side, they can sleep easy knowing students are making great use of the $30 million dollar school investment every night at home by accessing porn, playing video games, cyber bullying, catching up on episodes of “Pretty Little Liars,” and other productive teenage activities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why the Government Never Gets Tech Right
Getting to the bottom of HealthCare.gov’s flop
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/getting-to-the-bottom-of-healthcaregovs-flop.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
MILLIONS of Americans negotiating America’s health care system know all too well what the waiting room of a doctor’s office looks like. Now, thanks to HealthCare.gov, they know what a “virtual waiting room” looks like, too. Nearly 20 million Americans, in fact, have visited the Web site since it opened three weeks ago, but only about 500,000 managed to complete applications for insurance coverage. And an even smaller subset of those applicants actually obtained coverage.
For the first time in history, a president has had to stand in the Rose Garden to apologize for a broken Web site. But HealthCare.gov is only the latest episode in a string of information technology debacles by the federal government. Indeed, according to the research firm the Standish Group, 94 percent of large federal information technology projects over the past 10 years were unsuccessful — more than half were delayed, over budget, or didn’t meet user expectations, and 41.4 percent failed completely.
Clearly, these failures — though they are not as well known to the public — extend far beyond Barack Obama’s presidency. But this latest stings more than the others.
The government has to follow a code called the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which is more than 1,800 pages of legalese that all but ensure that the companies that win government contracts, like the ones put out to build HealthCare.gov, are those that can navigate the regulations best, but not necessarily do the best job.
But maybe there’s hope. In 2004, campaign contracting was a lot like government contracting is today: full of large, entrenched vendors providing subpar services. Howard Dean changed that by reaching out to a new breed of Internet-savvy companies and staffers (including one of us). In 2012, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney thanks in part to a mix of private-sector-trained technology workers and a well-developed ecosystem of technologies available from competitive consultants.
The good news is that these problems are not unique to the United States government, and others already have solutions. In 2011, the British government formed a new unit of its Cabinet Office called the Government Digital Service. It’s a team of internal technologists whose job it is to either build the right technology, or find the right vendors for every need across the government. It gives the government a technical brain. It has saved the country millions, and improved the way the government delivers services online.
The United States has taken a step in this direction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Designer Uses Algorithm to Genetically Breed … Chairs
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/10/can-you-genetically-breed-the-perfect-chair/
In the design world, there are few objects quite as ubiquitously designed as the chair. “Every designer wants to make a chair in his life,” says Jan Habraken, founder of New York City-based studio FormNation. “But if I do something, I want to make the previous object obsolete.”
Habraken figured there had to be a more scientific way to design the ultimate chair. “I wondered if I could breed the perfect chair, like we try to breed the perfect thoroughbred,” he says. His most recent project, Chairgenics, is an investigation into what would happen if you took the best features of the world’s most iconic chairs and blended them together to create a totally new form. Would it be possible to design the perfect chair through genetic breeding?
Creating the “best” of anything is ultimately a subjective process, but Habraken attempted to be as objective as possible. To find the parent chairs—the pieces that would provide the basis for breeding–he set up parameters that assessed the genetic makeup of chairs based on ergonomics, durability, construction, costs and aesthetics. Since it can be a little tricky to judge a chair’s appearance without inserting yourself into the process, Habraken devised a modern day selection process that appraised a chair’s popularity through Google and Yahoo image search.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lingerie and algorithms: Big data comes to fashion
http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/23/lingerie-and-algorithms-big-data-comes-to-fashion/
Does your least favorite shirt fit you too tightly in the shoulders but too baggy on the belly? That’s data. Do your breasts pop out of your bra and the straps dig in too tight? That’s data. Are sleeves strangely loose on you? That’s data.
The data trend that has overtaken everything from job recruiting to sales leads has finally made its way into an unexpected place: the world of Anna Wintour. That’s right. Big data has arrived in Fashionland.
There’s multiple already funded Kickstarters underway right now, all that use data to produce perfectly fitting men’s t-shirts, in 24-50 unique sizes for all fellas of all shapes and sizes.
Furthermore, yesterday one of the original data driven clothing startups, True&Co, announced its own line of lingerie. The company helps women pick bras that will fit them well by asking questions like “is your left boob bigger or your right boob?” It then factors the information into a proprietary ‘algorithm’ that tells women the best bra brands and sizes to wear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developers speak: The Ouya, four months later
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/202967/Developers_speak_The_Ouya_four_months_later.php
The Ouya microconsole has been available to the public for around four months now, and in that time the device’s own online marketplace has slowly but surely filled up with indie titles for download.
Gamasutra talked to a range of Ouya developers back at launch, to gauge how they felt about the console, whether sales were looking up, and how they saw the future for the microconsole.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cash-strapped students hungrily eye up old, unloved racks
Student clusterers in flop-per-dollar face-off
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/25/hpc_on_the_cheap/
SCC’13 How much supercomputing can you do with $2,500 worth of hardware? The four teams competing in the SC13 Student Cluster Commodity Track Competition will answer precisely this question – and more.
The Commodity Track is a new addition to the SC Student Cluster Competition event this year.
We all know and love the Standard Track: university teams build the fastest cluster they can, then compete live at the show to see who can turn in the best numbers on a set of HPC applications. The only limit on Standard Track competitors is the 26 amp (115 volt) power cap and the requirement that their gear fits in one rack.
In the Commodity Track, getting the most bang for your buck is the name of the game. Competitors have $2,500 they can use to buy components to build a true HPC cluster.
Figuring out how to spend the money to get the most flops/dollar might seem simple on the surface. But as event organiser Daniel Kamalic commented recently, “In this track of the competition, you’re going to see some very (very!) creative solutions and approaches. These really exemplify the spirit of what we’re trying to develop in the next generation of computational scientists and engineers.”
Consider the different options for a moment. Given the cash constraints, we’re not going to see much in the way of fancy Infiniband interconnects – it’s probably going to be 1GbE across the board. But that decision still leaves many questions unanswered.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mega-distie Ingram Micro takes knife to costs in ‘very challenged’ Europe
Q3 sales in region flat like a pancake, operating profit tumbles
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/10/25/ingram_q3_2013/
Flatlining sales growth in Europe has led the world’s largest distributor, Ingram Micro, to restart a cost-slashing exercise in the region after describing the operation as “still very challenged”.
It also plans to roll out newer tech services to resellers on this side of the Atlantic, which compared to the US has been underdeveloped.
The world’s largest tech distributor last night rolled out calendar Q3 results that showed a 12 per cent year-on-year sales hike to $10.2bn which was largely attributable to several acquisitions and some ground gained in North America.
The picture closer to home was less rosy for Ingram management – as turnover remained static compared to a year ago at £2.42bn, while operating income crashed to $4.9m from $14.5m.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Supercomputer Technology Reports for Duty
http://www.techonline.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/tech-papers/4421776/Supercomputer-Technology-Reports-for-Duty
High-performance embedded computing (HPEC) brings supercomputer technology to the mil/aero domain, delivering incredible performance in deployable designs. With the launch of the 4th generation Intel Core processor family, HPEC systems are achieving breakthrough performance, with over 2x to 4x faster signal processing while reducing size, weight, and power, and cost (SWAP-C)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Obamacare’s launch looked even worse from the inside
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/31/obamacares-launch-looked-even-worse-from-the-inside/?wprss=rss_business&clsrd
Healthcare.gov had tallied exactly six successful enrollments by the morning of Oct. 2, new documents released by the House Oversight Committee show.
By the end of Oct. 2, the health law Web site that serves 36 states had received 248 insurance enrollments.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Job Search Tips for Introverts
http://www.cio.com/article/741983/10_Job_Search_Tips_for_Introverts?page=1&taxonomyId=3123
Being introverted doesn’t have to slow your progress when it comes time to ramp up your career. In fact, introverts have many characteristics that help them succeed in the IT world. However, it’s important you understand your characteristics and can control — and even take advantage of — them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Better Data Leads to Better Insight
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=269247&cid=nl.dn14
Disruptive technologies continue to transform the manufacturing landscape at an unprecedented rate. Exciting breakthrough processes, like 3D printing or M2M or industrial Internets, bring new capabilities to the shop floor. Modern ERP technologies, such as integrated collaboration tools and smart tablets, increase responsiveness and the ability to meet customer expectations. Yet, market demand for speed of delivery, product-specialization, and value-add services continue to push manufacturers to do more with less.
Keeping pace with continuously evolving customer demands, global market conditions, and product innovations requires perseverance. Insight is critical, especially as recent changing market dynamics have put many manufacturers and margins at risk. This increased competition and slim margins places additional stress on manufacturers, dealers, rental companies, and service businesses to improve service performance — which is paramount to maintaining margins and growing profitability.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mind Controlled Virtual Reality | Rift + Hydra + EPOC
Mind control and motion tracking in virtual reality with simulations in first person shooting, education and medicine.
Devices used include the Oculus Rift for VR, Razer Hydra for hand tracking and Emotiv EPOC for movement in the environment using thought.
You can read more about the simulation and try it out for yourself at http://vr.chriszaharia.com
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft almost doubles marketing budget to flog Windows 8.1 and Surface tablets
But will more advertising be enough to persuade people to buy, buy, buy?
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2304462/microsoft-almost-doubles-marketing-budget-to-flog-windows-81-and-surface-tablets
SOFTWARE HOUSE Microsoft will pump almost double the amount of money on marketing for Windows 8.1 and its Surface 2 tablets as it did on the launch of Windows 8 and the first Surface devices in a bid to help push sales, online reports have suggested.
According to information leaked to Winsupersite.com, Microsoft spent $241m (£150m) on retail Windows efforts last year, but since that didn’t make Windows 8 and Surface devices fly off the shelves last year, Microsoft has upped the ante and is expected to spend about $405m (£253m) this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux 3.12 Released, Linus Proposes Bug Fix-Only 4.0
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/11/04/011227/linux-312-released-linus-proposes-bug-fix-only-40?
“Linus Torvalds announced the Linux 3.12 kernel release with a large number of improvements through many subsystems including new EXT4 file-system features, AMD Berlin APU support, a major CPUfreq governor improvement ”
“He’s thinking of tagging Linux 4.0 following the Linux 3.19 release in about one year”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mouse lag in video games since upgrading to Windows 8.1
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-gaming/mouse-lag-in-video-games-since-upgrading-to/85c28c06-b13c-43be-8282-88528c42e400
We are investigating the following situations:
1. Mouse jitters (jumps forward and back) as you move it through a game – This occurs in some games because Windows 8.1 handles the games’ checks for the mouse status differently.
2. Mouse movement is not to scale even after acceleration is turned off – If you have turned off acceleration to make the distance on the screen match the distance you move the mouse, that may not work correctly anymore.
3. Measured mouse Polling Rate has a lower reporting frequency than expected – If you have a gaming mouse that has a high frequency, when you test it, you may find it is reporting a lower frequency than you expect.
For these situations, check the game settings. If the game supports raw input from the mouse, enabling it may solve the issue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
12 year old ticking time bomb in Finnish companies
Windows XP is about 12 years old and therefore out of date, and security. The last operating system support will be discontinued in April. Six months later XP becomes more dangerous as a platform that security holes are not blocked.
Despite this, Windows XP is still found in almost one third of the world’s PCs. The problems are easy to push only China and developing countries, the reason, but the Atea and Market Vision fresh market review says another.
In Finland, 40 per cent of is the problem
Market Vision interviewed for the research of more than 300 companies and public sector organizations. According to the survey 40 per cent of Finnish companies and public sector organizations still using Windows XP, at least to some extent.
The large, more than one thousand employees in organizations share is even higher, at around 62 per cent. XP has not got rid of any small less than one hundred people in organizations. XP can be found just under one third of them.
Market Vision of the problems found in a particular major public sector organizations such as hospital districts. The report, however, says that the XP problem encountered in Finland for all types of businesses and organizations.
Atea warns that the projects have now a real hurry.
One reason for the delays is the application changes. Many organizations are using any of the XP platform tailor-made for business applications, such as enterprise resource planning system. Updating your operating system will only succeed when the application has been compensated or the exercise of the new platform.
Windows XP can also be found in addition to updated data centers. Windows Server 2003 Server operating system support only runs for about a year to get XP. Old server platform is still used in many Finnish organizations.
Atea reports that Windows XP sometimes the problem is rotated in such a way that the number of services are transferred to Windows Server 2003-based servers. This can be a period of one year.
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/11/04/12-vuotta-vanha-aikapommi-tikittaa-suomalaisissa-yrityksissa/201315353/66?rss=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Good Employees Leave (And How You Can Keep Them)
http://www.cio.com/article/742315/Why_Good_Employees_Leave_And_How_You_Can_Keep_Them_?page=1&taxonomyId=3123
If you’re losing good workers and you’re not sure why, the problem may lie with your firm’s management style. The good news is that you can make small changes that will make a huge difference when it comes to employee retention.
It’s tough when good employees leave: Productivity sinks, morale suffers and colleagues struggle with an increased workload until you find a replacement. On top of that, recruitment and search costs, training and on-boarding new hires can make for a difficult and expensive transition.
The best solution, of course, is keep your workers happy so they don’t want to leave. But before you can implement a plan to increase employee retention, you need to determine why valuable employees are leaving.
“Most people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their managers,” says Wendy Duarte, vice president of recruiting at recruiting, hiring, and consulting firm Mondo.
While that insight might be hard to swallow, understanding that your organization’s management philosophy could be part of the problem is the first step to improving retention, she says.
“When you lose your top talent, the first place to look is at management,” Duarte says. “Managing teams as a whole is hard. You have to manage to each individual, and invest time into discovering what each member of a team needs both at work and outside of work to do their job to the best of their ability,” she says.
One of the key things — if you’re really listening to employees — is to find out if they are getting the resources to add to and change their roles, to take on more and different responsibilities, to spearhead new projects, to experiment.
– Wendy Duarte, Mondo.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tape rocks for storage – if you don’t need to, um, access your data
SSDs wait in the wings, sharpening their scythes
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/14/tape_the_death_watch/
Ragging on the tape vendors does at times feel like kicking a kitten but ultimately tape sucks as a medium. Its fundamental problem is that it is a sequential medium in a random world.
People talk about tape as being the best possible medium for cold storage and that is true – as long as you never want to thaw large quantities quickly. If you only ever want to thaw a small amount and in relatively predictable manner, you’ll be fine with tape. Well, in the short term, anyway.
And getting IT departments to look at an horizon which is more than one refresh generation away is extremely tough.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to program unreliable chips
A new language lets coders reason about the trade-off between fidelity of execution and power or time savings in the computers of the future.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/how-to-program-unreliable-chips-1104.html
As transistors get smaller, they also become less reliable. So far, computer-chip designers have been able to work around that problem, but in the future, it could mean that computers stop improving at the rate we’ve come to expect.
A third possibility, which some researchers have begun to float, is that we could simply let our computers make more mistakes. If, for instance, a few pixels in each frame of a high-definition video are improperly decoded, viewers probably won’t notice — but relaxing the requirement of perfect decoding could yield gains in speed or energy efficiency.
In anticipation of the dawning age of unreliable chips, Martin Rinard’s research group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has developed a new programming framework that enables software developers to specify when errors may be tolerable. The system then calculates the probability that the software will perform as it’s intended.
“If the hardware really is going to stop working, this is a pretty big deal for computer science,”
The researchers’ system, which they’ve dubbed Rely, begins with a specification of the hardware on which a program is intended to run. That specification includes the expected failure rates of individual low-level instructions, such as the addition, multiplication, or comparison of two values. In its current version, Rely assumes that the hardware also has a failure-free mode of operation — one that might require slower execution or higher power consumption.
A developer who thinks that a particular program instruction can tolerate a little error simply adds a period — a “dot,” in programmers’ parlance — to the appropriate line of code. So the instruction “total = total + new_value” becomes “total = total +. new_value.” Where Rely encounters that telltale dot, it knows to evaluate the program’s execution using the failure rates in the specification. Otherwise, it assumes that the instruction needs to be executed properly.
But in ongoing work, they’re trying to develop a version of the system that allows the programmer to simply specify the accepted failure rate for whole blocks of code: say, pixels in a frame of video need to be decoded with 97 percent reliability. The system would then go through and automatically determine how the code should be modified to both meet those requirements and maximize either power savings or speed of execution.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
5 World Problems Too Big for Big Data
http://www.cio.com/article/742142/5_World_Problems_Too_Big_for_Big_Data?page=1&taxonomyId=600010
Despite advances in computing power, storage and analytics technology, some challenges are still too big for big data. Here’s a look at five such problems — and what it will take to solve them.
Health Records for the World: Medicine Where It’s Needed Most
Human Brain Map: See How the Rest of the Body Works
Map World Supply of Uranium: Track Weaponization, Energy Supply
Real-time Global Crime Data: More Proactive Policing
Tracking Everyone’s Children: Better, More Timely Amber Alerts
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bribe Devs To Improve Open Source Software
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/136-open-source/6554-bribe-devs-to-improve-open-source-software.html
A startup has had the bright idea of monetary exchange between those who want bug fixes and additional features in open source projects and has called the fledgling website bribe.io.
A super easy way to bribe developers to fix bugs and add features in the software you’re using.
Recognizing the fact that a lot of open source projects are maintained by developers working alone and in their spare time, the idea is to encourage other developers to by specifying a monetary value to a bug report or feature enhancement. Once an initial “Bribe” has been posted others can “chip in” and add to the financial incentive.
For example if 100 users want a feature and they are all willing to pay $10 for it then the programmer or programming team might decide that to raise its priority and add $1000 to the project’s funds. When the change is made the entire user community benefits.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Speed Test: Comparing Intel C++, GNU C++, and LLVM Clang Compilers
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/speed-test-comparing-intel-c-gnu-c-and-llvm-clang-compilers/
A realistic approach to benchmarking three popular tools.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Full Steam Ahead: Inside Valve’s Grand Plan to Replace Game Consoles With PCs
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/11/valve-steam-machines/
It’s what every gaming machine needs if it’s to get even a tenuous foothold in this ultra-competitive market. Software developers won’t bring their killer games to your platform if there isn’t a critical mass of addressable customers — but those customers won’t buy your hardware in the first place without exclusive software.
The difficulty of squaring this circle is the reason why the history of the gaming business is strewn with the bodies of failed platforms. If you release a new piece of gaming hardware without at least attempting to resolve that fundamental chicken-and-egg problem, you’re dead before you even launch. Yes, there are ways to do it, but they’re not foolproof, even if you’re an industry giant — witness Nintendo, with sales of its new Wii U platform deep underwater and minimal developer support for its second Christmas season.
Our customers love all those Steam titles, but they also like their families.
“There’s a strong desire from our customers that we’ve heard for a long time,” says Valve product designer Greg Coomer. “They love all those [Steam] titles, but they also like their families. And whenever they had to go into the living room, they’ve had to abandon everything they loved about the games in the other room of the house.”
Valve doesn’t need to convince anybody to give up their Xbox. All it needs to do to disrupt the game console biz is get its current customers to bring Steam out of the computer room and onto the couch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CMOs Must Expand Their Tech Skills in the Digital Marketing Era
http://www.cio.com/article/742537/CMOs_Must_Expand_Their_Tech_Skills_in_the_Digital_Marketing_Era?page=1&taxonomyId=3123.
As CMOs take on a more strategic role in the C-suite, they will need to broaden their technical skills and expertise to understand big data analytics, customer online experience, social media and more.
The balance of power in the C-suite (at least as measured by dollars spent on IT) is shifting. Where once the CIO held most of the purchasing power and the decision-making capability to determine which technology investments would drive business forward, the CMO is poised to take a much more strategic role in a data-driven business climate.
According to a frequently cited January 2012 research report by Gartner, by 2017 the CMO will outspend the CIO on technology. The traditional CMO role, focused solely on marketing campaigns and branding, is becoming obsolete, if it isn’t already, says Rona Borre, CEO and founder of recruiting, hiring, and consulting firm Instant Technology.
“I don’t think a CMO in the traditional sense exists anymore. CMOs today have to account for the digital age — the digitization of everything,” Borre says.
“Marketing professionals have to be tech-savvy, have to be well-versed in content optimization and be able to understand the importance of social media, data analytics, the Internet, search and so much more,” Borre says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here’s The Evidence That The Tech Sector Is In A Massive Bubble
http://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-that-tech-sector-is-in-a-bubble-2013-11
The stock market is at an all-time high. Tech startups with no revenue have billion-dollar valuations. And engineers are demanding Tesla sports cars just to show up at work.
Here’s the evidence that we’re in a new tech bubble, heading for a crash, just like the dot com bust of 1999.
Interest rates are effectively at 0%.
The stock market is at a peak, which is exactly what you’d expect in a zero-interest environment.
In the tech sector specifically, there has been a recent run-up in deal prices.
It’s not just tech asset prices that are high. Salaries are high, too.
Twitter svp/technology Chris Fry got a $10 million pay packet. He only joined the company last year.
It’s not just wages that are expensive. Company valuations are rising too.
Companies with broken business models are highly valued.
Companies without meaningful revenue are highly valued.
Companies with no revenue at all are highly valued.
Yahoo is again paying top dollar for companies with no meaningful revenue, just like it did in 1999.
Companies are making dumb decisions: This startup chose beef jerky over a 401 (k) plan.
Companies are making dumb decisions (part 2): There are more Facebook ad agencies than regular ad agencies.
Serious investors are beginning to suspect a tech bubble has formed, and that a crash is coming.
Andreessen Horowitz is pulling up the ladder.
One of the most legendary tech investors, Tim Draper, thinks we’re at the end of the curve.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel to Fab Altera FPGAs with ARM IP
by Jarred Walton on October 30, 2013 3:11 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7473/intel-to-fab-altera-fpgas-with-arm-ip
In a story posted today on EETimes, Altera announced at the ARM Developers Conference that they have entered into a partnership with Intel to have their next generation 64-bit ARM chips produced at Intel’s fabs. According to the report, Altera will be using Intel’s upcoming 14nm FinFET process technology to manufacture a Cortex-A53 quad-core SoC, which will be surrounded by FPGA logic.
The Intel/Altera partnership was first announced back in February 2013, and it’s worth noting that FPGAs are not an area where Intel currently competes. Even though ARM logic will be on the new chips, this likely won’t lead to direct competition with Intel’s own chips. The bigger deal of course is that while Intel’s 22nm process would give anyone willing to pay Intel’s price a leg up on the competition, 14nm is a full step ahead of the competition.
Intel has apparently inked deals with other companies as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ex-Googlers Bring A/B Testing to Mobile Apps
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/11/leanplum/
Google doesn’t like to guess. The web giant famously tests the effectiveness of everything, from the placement of ad blocks on a search results page to the color of its logo.
To do this, the company uses something similar to focus group testing: Different users will be shown different versions of a website, and the company tracks which versions perform better. It’s called A/B testing, and it’s now being used by everyone from tech startups to political campaigns.
Momchil Kyurkchiev and Andrew First did hundreds of these tests for Google. Now, their company Leanplum, which launches today after a year in beta, wants to help bring the same kind of thing to the rest of world, offering A/B testing tools for developers building mobile apps.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bug-Free Linux 4.0?
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/bug-free-linux-40
Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, but Linux founder and “keeper of the flame”, Linus Torvalds, has put developers and the rest of the world on notice that a Linux 4.0 is coming sooner rather than later, “I don’t want us to get to the kinds of crazy numbers we had in the 2.x series, so at some point we’re going to cut over from 3.x to 4.x, just to keep the numbers small and easy to remember.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ex-HP VP predicts PC arm sell-off and life as IBM’s number 2
Would Bernd Bischoff join the IT industry again? Mmm, let me think
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/11/06/interview_bernd_bischoff_former_hp_vp/
Whitman had delivered an upbeat performance, albeit one that recognised HP still has a way to go in the multi-year turnaround plan she has sketched out. She spoke of HP’s commitment to PCs and its channel, while dropping in some nuggets such as an entry into 3D printing, and downplaying the immensity of her task by suggesting that running California might have been an even tougher task than turning around HP.
Bischoff, though, was sceptical of exactly how far HP could turn itself around: “They’ve made too many mistakes in the last few years.”
In mobile he said, it had blown its chance to build a business around Palm. “They bought it for a lot of money and then did nothing. But now it’s too late.”
As for its PC business, despite the reversing of Whitman’s disastrous predecessor Leo Apotheker’s cataclysmic effort to offload the PC business, he was confident “they will sell it soon.” The only problem, he said, “now it’s too late to sell.”
For all its efforts to get into services and software, including the apocalyptically bad Autonomy acquisition, Bischoff predicted the best HP can shoot for is to become a sort of mini Blue. “They are not as strong as IBM. They will become a little IBM, the number 2. But IBM, they have more software, more services.”
“The good thing for HP is that they’re not just in the PC business. [Otherwise] Life would be a huge struggle. They still have other things.
The problem is, he continues, “They also make mistakes in the others – it’s good that the company is relatively stable but if they would have done another Leo Apotheker…”
Who’s going to do WELL? Lenovo… at least in PCs
Bischoff was floated as an adviser for a ground to top restructure of Acer following the eruption of an excess inventory mountain at the Taiwanese vendor in 2011. His former Fujitsu colleague Walter Deppeler is a senior corporate VP at Acer.
Asked where he sees Acer heading, Bischoff simply declares that the only people he sees doing well “at the moment in that whole business is Lenovo”.
However, Lenovo faces its own issues building an enterprise business beyond the client. Bischoff is sceptical of rumours that IBM was ready to sell its x86 server business to the Chinese giant, bolstering the client business it bought from Big Blue some years ago. “You really think IBM will give them their server business? I wouldn’t do it.”
“The big servers is a good business for them,” he continues. “But the rest…services – that was a much better biz 10 years ago. They also have low end services where you don’t make profit and it’s not sustainable.”