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:
Advanced Hard Drive Caching Techniques
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/advanced-hard-drive-caching-techniques
With the introduction of the solid-state Flash drive, performance came to the forefront for data storage technologies. Prior to that, software developers and server administrators needed to devise methods for which they could increase I/O throughput to storage, most of which resulted in low capacity caching to random access memory (RAM) or a RAM drive. Although not as fast as RAM, the Flash drive was almost a dream come true, but it had its limitations—one of which was its low capacities packaged in the NAND-based chips.
Even today, the consumer SSD cannot compare to the capacities provided by the magnetic hard disk drive (or HDD), which is why in this article I intend to introduce readers to proven methods for obtaining near SSD performance with the traditional HDD. Multiple open-source projects exist that can achieve this, all but one of which utilizes an SSD as a caching node, and the other caches to RAM.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Linux is the safest”
Linux is more secure than any other operating system. The whole world gets to see each line of code, the operating system, similar to the Linux Foundation director Jim Zemlin Venture Beat interview. Supervising the development of the Linux Foundation’s Zemlin that protect the privacy of users as tightly as before. – Linux does not have the rear doors. And the NSA has approached us, Zemlin emphasizes in an interview.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=714:linux-on-turvallisin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA Spying Risks $35 Billion in U.S. Technology Sales
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-26/nsa-spying-risks-35-billion-in-u-s-technology-sales.html
International anger over the National Security Agency’s Internet surveillance is hurting global sales by American technology companies and setting back U.S. efforts to promote Internet freedom.
Disclosures of spying abroad may cost U.S. companies as much as $35 billion in lost revenue through 2016 because of doubts about the security of information on their systems, according to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a policy research group in Washington whose board includes representatives of companies such as International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Intel Corp. (INTC)
“The potential fallout is pretty huge given how much our economy depends on the information economy for its growth,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington policy group. “It’s increasingly where the U.S. advantage lies.”
Any setback in the U.S. push to maintain an open Internet also could inflict indirect damage on companies such as Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG) that benefit from global networks with few national restrictions.
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), the world’s largest maker of computer-networking equipment, said this month that the NSA disclosures are causing some hesitation among customers in emerging markets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Europe’s largest software houses
1 SAP (Germany)
2 Dassault Systems (France)
3 Sage (UK)
4 Hexagon (Sweden)
5 Wincor Nixdorf (Germany)
6 Asseco Group (Poland)
7 Software AG (Germany)
8 DATEV (Germany)
9 Wolters Kluwer (The Netherlands)
10 Swift (Belgium)
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/euroopan+suurimmat+softatalot+listattiin++nama+5+suomalaista+ylsivat+joukkoon/a950680
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet Microsoft’s master of high-tech showmanship
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/stories/people/ryan-asdourian.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Said to Lean to Mulally, Nadella in CEO Search
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-28/microsoft-board-said-to-lean-to-mulally-nadella-in-ceo-search.html
Microsoft Corp.’s board is focusing on Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally and internal executive Satya Nadella as part of a group of more likely candidates to become the next CEO of the world’s biggest software company, according to people familiar with the matter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
OCZ filing for bankruptcy, assets could go to Toshiba
http://techreport.com/news/25706/ocz-filing-for-bankruptcy-assets-could-go-to-toshiba
The writing has been on the wall for a while, and the axe has finally swung. OCZ is filing for bankruptcy. The SSD maker failed to comply with the terms of its loan agreement with Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which has “disbursed the cash in [OCZ's] respective accounts to accounts under the control of Hercules.”
According to the press release posted on Market Watch, Toshiba has made an offer to acquire “substantially all of [OCZ's] assets in a bankruptcy proceeding.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
PS4 will see some PSN features disabled to ensure smooth European launch
http://www.vg247.com/2013/11/28/ps4-will-see-some-psn-disabled-to-ensure-smooth-european-launch/
PlayStation 4′s list of launch day PSN services has been updated by Sony, confirmed that a few small features will be turned off to ensure a smooth ride on day one.
Sony posted an update on PS Blog EU to explain that the company is expecting record numbers of PSN activity alongside current PS4 users in the States.
To help ease the server pressure, Sony is disabling PSN’s ‘What’s New’ function
Tomi Engdahl says:
Just who is Apple’s most frustrated fanboi? Surprise – it’s GOOGLE
Engineer claims poor support has driven advertising king to roll its own tools
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/27/google_mac_support/
Major Apple customer Google says it has been forced to go it alone when supporting a large-scale deployment of Macs.
The advertising giant claims it has to develop much of its own tools for managing Macs at scale due to Apple’s neglect of enterprise management platforms.
“We don’t use any of Apple’s tools to manage the Macs,” said Google systems engineer Clay Caviness in a speech at the LISA ’13 conference this month, the video of which was thrown online this week.
One reason why Google chooses to avoid Apple’s two main management tools of Apple OS 10 Server and Apple Remote Desktop is that they “break down when you get over 50, 100, 200 machines you’re managing,” he said. “We’ve lost [Apple's] attention as far as enterprise management tools.”
But being a resourceful Mac-loving company Google (which competes against Apple with its own smartphones and Android operating system) has roped in a set of tools that it finds can let it manage the OS X systems effectively.
“There was a time when Macs were a small part of the Google fleet, but as of now if you start at Google and want to use a platform other than Mac you have to make a business case,” says Clay.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2013 Giving Guide
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/give-freely-this-cyber-monday-introducing-the-2013-giving-guide
Here are some of the gift ideas based on the 2013 Giving Guide:
Help your parent or sibling upgrade to a laptop that comes preinstalled with GNU/Linux.
Get yourself a Lulzbot TAZ 2.0 3D printer and make 3D-printed stocking stuffers for the whole family.
Give a membership to the Free Software Foundation, or make a donation on behalf of a friend to another worthy organization, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Creative Commons.
You can give copies of the Giving Guide to friends and family to encourage them to get you gifts that respect your freedom.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are you giving your loved ones holiday gifts they can use freely, or gifts which put someone else in control?
http://www.fsf.org/givingguide
Electronics are popular gifts for the holidays, but people often overlook the restrictions that manufacturers slip under the wrapping paper. Companies like Microsoft and Apple can and will use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to prevent your loved ones from sharing apps on the laptop you got them or remixing the songs on their expensive new iPad. If the recipient of your gift is as unlucky as one woman last year, Amazon might even block all the books on their Kindle and refuse to explain why. Companies want us to accept this kind of intrusive control, but when you think about, it’s unethical (and annoying!).
The good news is, for every device that uses DRM or has a remote “kill switch” like the Kindle, ethical companies have made a better one that doesn’t, one that your loved ones will be free to enjoy however they wish. Here’s a list of these smarter gifts, compared with their more well-known, but more restrictive alternatives.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flexible working hours have increased rapidly, the workers are demanding better tools for collaboration, video conferencing, culture has gained ground in large international companies and IT departments are under pressure from employees who want to use their own devices in the workplace.
For large organizations, these trends mean ever greater danger to swerve off the “digital chaos,” BT and Cisco are you doing this recent study says.
At the same time, corporate IT managers looking for a cloud computing solution for increased IT budgets and obsolete legacy systems.
The study questionnaire was sent to 500 IT decision makers in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
Only about a third of the respondents said that their communications platform is equipped with a change in your business, about half of the company told the switchboard to be out of date, and four in ten believes that the company’s Centrex system must be replaced.
A firm belief in the cloud
According to the survey of IT decision-makers increasingly see the cloud as a solution to their problems. Almost two out of three respondents saw that the cloud will be the future common way of transmitting voice and data communication services. 85 percent of them planning to respond to the demand for cloud collaboration services.
Almost 60 percent of those polled believed that cloud services are easier to keep up to date, and almost a third of co-operation would cost services without any obligation.
However, doubts about security. The survey revealed that nearly two thirds of IT managers feel the security to be one of the main obstacle to the deployment of cloud services.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/isoissa+vaanii+digikatastrofin+vaara/a950968
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs, IT chiefs: ARRGH! What do you MEAN, HR just bought 400 iPads and didn’t tell us
According to a survey, tech managers are in the dark about ‘unofficial’ IT spend
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/26/ceb_cio_budget_control/
CIOs and IT bods are in the dark over tech budgets as lines of biz people sidestep them to deploy their own projects, according to a survey by the Corporate Executive Board.
The biggest culprits are the fools in HR, Marketing, Operations and Finance, with for example between six to nine per cent of HR budgets splashed on things like cloud-based systems and talent analytics.
“Failing to recognise the extent to which tech driven projects ate happening outside of the IT department can be a real worry, yet trying to maintain total control is equally a step in the wrong direction.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
SAP rejects calls for a pan-European IT champion
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/27/us-sap-airbus-it-idUSBRE9AQ0RA20131127
Germany’s biggest tech company, SAP, has rejected calls by domestic politicians for European IT firms to band together to better compete against U.S. tech groups in the wake of spying allegations.
Some German politicians have suggested an IT industry equivalent to European jetmaker Airbus following allegations about U.S. spying on Europeans, including the monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.
“A merger between some European IT companies with the aim of drawing a line between them and the rest of the global market, does not make any sense,” SAP co-Chief Executive Jim Hagemann Snabe said on Wednesday, in an e-mailed response to questions from Reuters.
“Such an endeavor would be doomed to fail from the outset,” he said, adding it would lead to less competition, less innovation and less growth in a globally-focused sector.
German politicians in favor of IT companies teaming up, such as Merkel, argue it would make Europe less dependent on U.S. technology and data groups including Microsoft, Google and Cisco.
Hagemann Snabe said Europe’s IT sector needed to promote competition and foster young talent.
Tomi says:
Intel Linux Driver Now Nearly As Fast As Windows OpenGL Driver
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/30/1754244/intel-linux-driver-now-nearly-as-fast-as-windows-opengl-driver
“Intel’s open-source Linux graphics driver is now running neck-and-neck with the Windows 8.1 driver for OpenGL performance”
“The NVIDIA driver has long been able to run at similar speeds between Windows and Linux given the common code-base”
foot fetish says:
My relatives every time say that I am wasting my time here at net, however I know I am getting know-how everyday by reading such fastidious content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zuckerberg Shows Kindergartners Ruby Instead of JavaScript
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/12/01/013201/zuckerberg-shows-kindergartners-ruby-instead-of-javascript
“Code.org was able to switch the example Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg uses to illustrate Repeat Loops from JavaScript to what looks like Ruby”
“Khan Academy, on the other hand, is sticking with JavaScript for its Hour of Code tutorial”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Fond Farewell to the Craziest, Longest, Most Eventful Console Generation Ever
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/11/longest-console-generation/
On March 9, 2005, the gaming press crowded into a ballroom in the Moscone Center in San Francisco to witness the birth of a new era of game machines. Sony had dominated the industry for the last decade, and even goliath Microsoft had been no match for PlayStation 2. But the original Xbox was just the foot in the door
The last great leap in gaming, Allard said, was the transition from 2-D to 3-D. What would happen next, he said, would be no less momentous: The transition to high-definition graphics, or the HD Era.
To help usher the game developer crowd into the HD Era, Allard concluded his speech by giving out hundreds of those Samsung 23-inch HD sets to roughly a third of the crowd, via lottery.
The 2005 E3 Expo was the stage for the big showdown, as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo would all be talking about next-gen.
The next generation had launched, technically, but not entirely. Because nobody was fully ready for what consumers would start to demand, and everything would change.
This generation was different. Microsoft and Sony started altering their boxes right out of the gate. Sony pulled the PlayStation 3′s $499, 20 GB hard drive variation off shelves in early 2007, a few months after launch. Then it took the PlayStation 2′s Emotion Engine chip, which had been included on the PS3 motherboard to provide perfect backward compatibility, out of the design before it launched PS3 in Europe, meaning that only the U.S. and Japan got the PS3 as Sony originally pitched it. The version it launched in Europe and later in the U.S. still ran most PS2 games, but with software glitches that were sometimes serious. After a while, they removed even that functionality.
The Xbox 360 had design flaws that led to a phenomenally large percentage of units bricking themselves and dying, which was helpfully cued to the user by the green lights around the power button turning red to indicate a “general hardware failure.”
By 2010, 360 was 5 years old — older than the Xbox was when Microsoft had announced it — and gamers were looking for the next generation. But that wouldn’t happen for a long time. In 2009, Sony had introduced a slimmer, cheaper PlayStation 3, and Microsoft followed suit with a redesigned 360 in 2010. And they’d both redesign them again before the generation was over!
Since the Wii was already profitable and incredibly popular, Nintendo had no need to refresh the box. This resulted, however, in Wii being perilously deficient in certain areas.
The rise of downloadable games and microtransactions actually presented similar problems for both of Nintendo’s competitors as the generation wore on. When the consoles were released, downloadable games were a novelty — the vast majority of game dollars were spent on $50-60 discs, and this could be supplemented with bite-sized game experiences available by download with electronic payment.
Meanwhile, Sony was putting up all kinds of stuff as downloadable titles
The strange paradox of this past generation of consoles is that for all of the problems, all of the hardware failures and flubbed launches and redesigns, they’ve still sold more consoles so far this generation than last generation. Combined, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox sold under 200 million units. So far — so far! — PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii are over 260 million.
So, what lessons can we take away as we bid farewell to this console generation?
Expect the unexpected. Nobody saw the Wii coming, and anyone who tells you they did is a liar.
Disappointed in the console? Voice your concerns and be specific. Microsoft and Sony have the ability to fix any software problem
You may just have to get used to some things that you don’t like.
Expect this console generation to go on for a long time… maybe even forever.
One thing’s for sure: If the last generation was that insane, this one’s going to be even crazier.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Best Gaming Laptops and Notebooks – Holiday 2013
by Jarred Walton on November 29, 2013 2:56 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7554/best-gaming-laptops-and-notebooks-holiday-2013
Tomi Engdahl says:
Best Budget Laptops – Holiday 2013
by Jarred Walton on November 28, 2013 2:45 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7553/best-budget-laptops-holiday-2013
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dell Leaks Details of a 24” UHD 4K (3840×2160) Monitor, the UP2414Q
by Ian Cutress on December 1, 2013 12:01 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7556/dell-leaks-details-of-a-24-uhd-4k-3840×2160-monitor-the-up2414q
Currently there are several 4K options on the market – models using the higher end IGZO displays such as the Dell Ultrasharp 32” 4K (UP3214Q, $3500) or the ASUS PQ321Q ($3500, our review) are currently attracting the most attention. From my perspective (and a few others), 32” is just too large for a desktop monitor and while 4K seems attractive, something smaller (27”) would be more palatable.
Putting arguments aside about OS scaling and whether someone needs 4K in a 24 inch monitor, the specifications do make for interesting reading
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 7 outstrips Windows 8.x with small Movember growth
It might not look like much, but it’s still bigger than yours…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/02/windows_8_point_x_market_share/
Windows 7 beat Windows 8.x in trench-war battle for growing market share in November.
Netmarketshare stats for the month found Windows 7 had increased its share of desktops from 46.42 to 46.64 per cent of machines.
Windows 8 fell from 7.53 per cent in October to 6.66 in November, while Windows 8.1 increased from 1.72 per cent to 2.64 per cent.
Combined, the Window 8.x pair hit 9.3 per cent of the market
Windows 7 is catching upgraders in business moving from Windows XP; also, judging by these numbers, it’s also going on a number of consumer desktops.
Tomi Engdahl says:
While Mulally/Nadella Remain the Favorites, Bates Is Silicon Valley’s Choice for Microsoft CEO
http://allthingsd.com/20131129/while-mulallynadella-remain-the-favorites-bates-is-silicon-valleys-choice-for-microsoft-ceo/?mod=tweet
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bill Gates regrets that Microsoft didn’t ship WinFS
But sees something similar in the future
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2243142/bill-gates-regrets-that-microsoft-didnt-ship-winfs
MICROSOFT’S decision to can its next generation WinFS file system has been described by Bill Gates as one of his biggest regrets.
Microsoft’s WinFS was set to be one of the key technologies in Windows Vista but the next generation file system never saw the light of day
described WinFS as, “a rich database as the client/cloud store that was part of a Windows release that was before its time. This is an idea that will re-emerge since your cloud store will be rich with schema rather than just a bunch of files and the client will be a partial replica of it with rich schema understanding.”
Welcker cited a lack of clear understanding of what WinFS was trying to achieve.
At the time Microsoft dumped WinFS in a bid to get Windows Vista out the door, however given that file systems with rich schemas seems like an obvious development now, it is surprising that Microsoft didn’t continue development after Windows Vista came out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keeping warm in winter the el Reg way: Setting a NAS box ON FIRE
Canadian Vultures deploy the fearsome flaming REID
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/02/setting_the_iosafe_214_on_fire/
Hardware reviews are typically boring, tedious affairs with a fairly predictable outcome: someone sends you a minor iteration of a product and you verify that it behaves as expected. Every now and again, however, someone makes a claim so outrageous that you simply must test whether or not it’s true. Such is the case with the ioSafe 214 (nee ioSafe N2).
As discussed in our teaser article, ioSafe claims that the 214 is both fireproof and waterproof. It’s designed to withstand a building burning down around it and then being extinguished by firefighters. That falls into the realm of “outrageous claims” for me, so we asked if they’d send us one so we could set it on fire.
They sent it, we burned it, and there’s a video to prove it.
From a technical standpoint the NAS works reasonably well.
ioSafe are marketing the 214 as “Disaster Recovery (DR) for the private cloud”. While a 2-disk RAID makes this a laughable suggestion at enterprise scale, SMBs and even the commercial midmarket should sit up and take notice: ioSafe’s claims near indestructibility are true.
We set the unit on fire while it was running. We were streaming video off the thing while writing files to it.
We watched as the power supply was consumed in flames, the unit went dead and the electrical system shorted out. The system went dead.
By our calculations – and thanks to a decent breeze during the burn supplying a little extra oxygen – we got the fire over 700 °C (1300 Fahrenheit). The average burning building is only supposed to get to about 1200 Fahrenheit (648 °C)
We smothered the flames with chemical suppressants and then poured water on it for the next 20 minutes
The end result? The drives came out looking – and working – like new.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile Boosts Processor Market
Qualcomm strong in smartphone, Chinese lead Android tablet processors
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320260&
This year’s unit shipments for processors will grow 24% over 2012 to as high as 1.5 billion, according to IHS Inc.
The fast rise is being bolstered by strong smartphone and tablet sales, which are more than compensating for a 13% slump in desktop sales and a 2% drop in notebook sales, the research firm said in its report. Of all processor segments, only PCs experienced a downturn, since even server processors experienced growth in 2013. For instance, server processor shipments rose to 4.8 million units in the second quarter from 4.6 million a year earlier.
Despite their smaller price tags compared with PC processors, the overall market revenue for processors will grow by single digits in 2013
“Popularity of mobile devices has changed the landscape of the processor market as tablets and smartphones take over from PCs among consumers,
In the hottest mobile processor markets, Xu said the traditional PC emphasis on raw speed has shifted to features relevant to mobile computing. “Instead of more computing power focus driven by PC market, the mobile processor market is focusing on features, such as power efficiency and the user experience.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech boom! The war for top developer talent
With eight qualified candidates for every 10 openings, today’s talented developers have their pick of perks, career paths, and more
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/tech-boom-the-war-top-developer-talent-231709
The Oval Office concept started as a joke, explains Tim Clem, who like nearly every other GitHub employee has no official title, but oversees product and corporate strategy for the six-year-old startup. If you could build the coolest room in the world, what would it be? The idea stuck.
“We want everyone who’s new to GitHub — whether they’re interviewing for a job, a potential client, or just one of our superfans coming by for a visit — to feel like a first-class citizen,” Clem shouts above the hammering.
GitHub sits at the white-hot center of a tech boom unseen since the early days of dot-coms. It is both emblematic of an industry where success is often accompanied by excess, as well as a showcase where software engineers can highlight their coding chops to prospective employers. Each month nearly 5 million developers pay up to $200 apiece to share code and swap techniques on GitHub’s online project hosting platform. If you want a job with an open source company, your list of GitHub commits is far more important than a résumé on LinkedIn.
In a world that increasingly runs on code, developers are king — and companies will pay a king’s ransom to lure top talent. What follows is an inside look at some of the startups and development firms fueling the hottest market for coding talent the tech industry has ever seen.
Oval Office aside, GitHub is not unusual in the kinds of perks it offers employees, roughly 70 percent of whom are developers or designers. Across Silicon Valley and beyond, companies compete to see who can offer the most generous salaries, the best benefits, the most over-the-top extras.
That’s because for every 10 coding jobs in the marketplace, there are maybe eight people who can fill them, estimates Avik Patel, senior staffing manager for WinterWyman in New York.
“Demand has grown like crazy, but the talent pool hasn’t kept pace,” he says.
Perks vs. work/life balance: The central trade-off of the hiring market
But only the naïve believe such perks are truly free. The trade-off for being served breakfast and dinner at work is that you’re expected to arrive early and stay late. The toys, trips, and games with coworkers substitute for a social life, as it is not uncommon for developers to grind through 80-hour workweeks. It’s a culture designed for the young and unattached.
The gaming industry is especially notorious for its disregard of life/work balance, notes Scott Keller, director of strategic solutions for Yoh, a high-tech recruiting and staffing firm. With billions of dollars riding on the success of a game, coders are expected to do whatever it takes to hit their release dates.
“People end up missing the birth of their children and postponing their weddings,” says Keller. “When you get into your 30s and 40s and have a family, you don’t want to work 18 hours a day anymore. But if you only put in 12 hours, well, then you’re a slacker.”
It’s a trade-off many developers are unwilling to make.
“These companies value an environment where you screw around and stay there all the time,”
“It’s a buyer’s market out there, so you need to have a compelling story,” he says. “We actually have two.”
Culture, community, code
In many ways, the most visible perks of coding culture are no longer a differentiating feature in attracting talent. Even salaries and stock options aren’t always the deciding factor. The most appealing thing is often the nature of the work itself, as well as the community of coders they’ll be part of.
“Number one on their list was the opportunity to learn and grow on the job,”
“If you go with one of the big dogs, they’ll promise you a lot up front, including probably a six-figure salary,” says Harlan. “But once you get inside one of these companies, you can get pinned to a specific part or feature of a project for months or years at a time. Here you’re working on a new project every three or four months. Within the first year, you’ll have helped create two or three websites or apps that you can tell your friends, ‘I made that.’”
“We are delivery junkies,” jokes Associate Director Davis W. Frank. “It turns out I get much more of a dopamine rush knowing I can ship code at any time than some testosterone-driven ‘I just solved this big hard problem I’ve been working on for months.’ Solving tens of problems a week is way more gratifying.”
“It’s cool that people can relate to what we’re doing, while at the same time going after real challenges in enterprise computing,”
“Every candidate we look at these days has an offer from at least one of the following companies: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Square, Pinterest, or Palantir,” says Schillace. “If you want to play at a high level and recruit the best engineers, every single piece matters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 15 worst ways to kill programming productivity
Meetings, know-nothing managers, productivity metrics — here’s what’s threatening to slay the next generation of great software
http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/129821/the-15-worst-ways-kill-programming-productivity-231450
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT departments are outsourcing in preference to recruit
IT departments are outsourced more and more tasks, instead of taking their own employees on the payroll. The United States to the latest employment figures show that in the last 12 months, the country has created 77 600 new IT jobs.
Despite the low numbers, the management consulting firm Janko Associates CEO Victor Janulaitis sees the light in the tunnel, because in general, the IT sector personnel budgets are increasing.
“Our customers want a more streamlined and flexible workforce to improve cost-efficiency. Our service companies are trying to save 30 to 60 percent of their costs, “Cannone says.
Mondo McGarrity, the achievement of savings is not as simple as that. Companies in need of a skilled labor force, which will also pay an outsourced, Garrity said. Skilled labor, the price may even surprise savings on the lookout for the outsourcing companies.
“In order to obtain the necessary specific abilities and skills with employees, companies have to pay for it, whether it is outsourcing or full-time employee”
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/itosastot+ulkoistavat+mieluummin+kuin+rekrytoivat/a951541
Tomi Engdahl says:
40 Percent Of IT Spending Is Outside CIO Control
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2013/12/02/40-percent-of-it-spending-is-outside-cio-control/
The good news for CIOs — they still control about 60 percent of the average IT budget in a corporation.
The bad news — they think they control 80 percent, according to a survey of member-based advisory firm CEB, which surveyed 165 organizations representing more than £29 billion in IT spending in Europe and the US.
“There’s a surprising amount being spent beyond IT and CIOs only see half of it,” said, Andrew Horne, managing director at CEB in London.
“Traditionally, this has been seen as a bad thing, as the names suggest — shadow or rogue IT — and it has been seen as risky because it doesn’t have the same security that traditional IT does. It also is potentially wasteful because it can duplicate things being done by IT. And it often has inexperienced people dealing with vendors who get more out of them. Our view is that you have to distinguish between health and unhealthy shadow IT.”
Independent IT projects can be driven by creative people in a company, he said.
“Individual employees up to the head of sales are spending money on technology because they see interesting or exciting opportunities to improve the business,” Horne explained. “They want to experiment with technology. To the extent that is going on, we think it is healthy. But it is unhealthy if it is just duplicating what the company is already doing”
The result is some tension between the CIO who thinks technology needs to be controlled and the business side saying they want more of a role in the decisions, and pushing back at IT control efforts.
Best practices are evolving, Horne added.
“We see a growing number of CIOs recognize that shadow IT is not always a bad thing. Often the bigger problem is their teams haven’t gotten that message.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC Forecasts PC Shipments to Fall by Double Digits In 2013; Volumes Are Expected To Stabilize Above 300 Million Units per Year, But With No Significant Recovery
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24466513
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., December 2, 2013 – Worldwide PC shipments are expected to fall by -10.1% in 2013, slightly below the previous projection of -9.7%, and by far the most severe yearly contraction on record, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. Interest in PCs has remained limited, leading to little indication of positive growth beyond replacement of existing systems.
The commercial market is faring notably better than the consumer market in 2013 with shipments declining by -5% year over year compared to nearly -15% for consumer.
“Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system,” said Jay Chou, Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide Quarterly PC Trackers at IDC. “While IDC research finds that the PC still remains the primary computing device – for example, PCs are used more hours per day than tablets or phones – PC usage is nonetheless declining each year as more devices become available. And despite industry efforts, PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespans continue to increase, thereby limiting market growth.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bring Your Own Disks: The Synology DS214 network storage box
Home NAS rig gets less expensive, less hassle-some
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/03/for_bob_synology_ds214/
The Bring-Your-Own-Disks home server market might not be mainstream but it’s pretty lively place, with giants like Cisco mixing with obscure Taiwanese box-shifters. And although these quiet, sub-£400 servers make a useful bit of small office kit, the abundance of media awash in family homes and shared digs give them another role – of bringing some order to chaos at home.
Home NAS has flourished after Microsoft decided to kneecap its very useful Home Server product, an option which gave new life to an old PC or laptop. Although Redmond never attempted to market this product very hard… if it all.
The candidates in the budget home NAS market are embedded Linux boxes, and are usually sold without the disks.
Easy install
This year the budget end of Synology’s also gets the “tool-less assembly” treatment. No screwdriver is required to install the hard drives and get under way, and it took under five minutes to power up the box.
So what do you get? What’s it all for? A budget NAS box is typically, if nothing else, a central backup point for a home or small office, with USB printer sharing and proper user accounts with proper permissions and quotas. I’m of the view that every home should have one.
The system will recognise an external photo folder, and has a dedicated Copy button on the front, so if you allow it, the box will suck up the photos automatically.
More advanced pro options such as iSCSI are also available in the budget boxes
Synology has also long bundled MPEG streaming and photo viewing and a crude iTunes server.
Another popular usage case is for handling surveillance video, handling a number of IP cameras concurrently. And there’s a good range of third party packages that can be installed with one click, including WordPress and SugarCRM.
Synology’s success owes much to its web top GUI, accessed through a browser, which is now polished and mature and, thankfully, doesn’t suck up system resources.
Running a home server may have once sounded ludicrous, but the low power consumption of the ARM board and aggressive power management of modern drives make them very unobtrusive. They can be set to power up and down to a schedule. The official power consumption is 22.64W in access mode, 20.7W when idle, and 9W in hibernation.
A home NAS box is a bit like an iPad – you don’t really need one but once you have one, so many things – from backups to photo sharing – are that much easier.
Tomi Engdahl says:
So, what is new in SQL 2014, exactly?
In-memory Performance, High Availability. All on a screen near you
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/03/sql_2014_live_training_webcast_promo/
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 has in-memory capabilities built into the core database and provides new cloud capabilities to simplify cloud adoption for your SQL databases and help you unlock new hybrid scenarios.
It builds on the prior release by delivering new in-memory capabilities built into the core database for OLTP and data warehousing, and provides new disaster recovery and backup solutions with Windows Azure
Tomi Engdahl says:
Death of the Desktop
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=270105&
Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. Global smartphone sales passed 250 million sales in the third quarter of this year and with ongoing new tablet and smartphone releases, December 2013 will no doubt see millions of devices finding their way under a tree to be opened on Christmas morning around the world.
The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This is slowly leading to the death of the desktop. What does this mean for the design world? How will designers prepare for this user experience change? Is responsive design enough? There are some big questions that need answering.
Mobile design has already influenced desktop web design to the point where some user interfaces are solely mobile orientated.
But when will the traditional desktop browsing experience as we know it cease? How will digital designers and businesses need to consider their design approach to new technologies? Designers need to think about the answers to these questions.
Technology
There won’t be a formal day or week or month when this death comes, but it is inevitable it will be within this decade. As mobile browsing increases and job demands see busy executives taking more and more work home with them, the mobile device will be the device that allows them to work both in the office and at home, not a desktop and not a laptop. It’s not just the commercial values that will see the desktop fade away, but the social interactive mobile devices that offer families, friends, and communities the ability to engage and share content. Portability and shareability are the key targets for mobile device designers. Devices will need to reflect the values of the software they are running. Some 10 years from now we will be laughing at the fact we carried laptops to and from work.
Technology has moved so fast over the past 10 years and the traditional desktop is struggling to keep up.
A shift in society
We’ve become a species obsessed with demand and access to content, and perhaps rightly so. Creating innovative products that are becoming more and more affordable has led us to become more of a material-led society.
Design responds to the changing needs of society, and sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google is building Chrome apps support for Android and iOS, beta release coming as soon as January 2014
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/12/03/google-building-chrome-apps-support-android-ios-beta-release-coming-soon-january-2014/
Google is working on bringing Chrome packaged apps from the desktop to the mobile world. The company is currently building a toolkit to help developers create Chrome apps for Android and iOS, as well as port their existing Chrome apps to both mobile platforms.
The news comes by means of a GitHub repository we stumbled on called Mobile Chrome Apps led by Michal Mocny, a Software Developer at Google. The included documentation sheds a bit more light on what exactly the company is trying to put together: Chrome Packaged App for Windows, OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS are just the beginning.
The toolkit will help developers create Android and iOS hybrid native apps with Chrome app polyfills, through Apache Cordova. The steps include modifying for mobile design, fixing bugs, working around limitations, and of course, testing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP Slate tablets running Android Jellybean hit the market
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2068220/hp-slate-tablets-running-android-jellybean-hit-the-market.html
The tablets run Android 4.2, code-named Jellybean, and are listed at the company’s tablet page. The list includes the $200 Slate 7 Extreme with a 7-inch screen, the $329.99 Slate 8 Pro with an 8-inch screen, and the $300 Slate 10 HD with a 10.1-inch screen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s ‘Project Spark’ beta arrives on Windows 8.1, lets you create an Xbox One game
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/3/5169716/microsoft-project-spark-windows-8-1-beta-app
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Microsoft is launching a beta version of Project Spark today, its game-maker project for Windows 8.1, Xbox 360, and the new Xbox One console. Project Spark is essentially a tool to allow developers, enthusiasts, and gamers to build a game within a game. Players can build custom worlds, characters, and animations from an Xbox One or a Windows 8.1 PC to play across both platforms. It’s similar in concept to Sony’s LittleBigPlanet, but Microsoft is making use of its history with Kodu and pushing SmartGlass integration to allow players to interact with their games and collaborate from a tablet while they build and play on an Xbox One.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD A10 Kaveri APU Details Emerge, Combining Steamroller and Graphics Core Next
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/12/04/0150246/amd-a10-kaveri-apu-details-emerge-combining-steamroller-and-graphics-core-next
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Challenge of Cross-Language Interoperability
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/12/04/0148255/the-challenge-of-cross-language-interoperability
“David Chisnall of the University of Cambridge describes how interfacing between languages is increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2543971
Interfacing between languages is increasingly important
Interoperability between languages has been a problem since the second programming language was invented. Solutions have ranged from language-independent object models such as COM (Component Object Model) and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) to VMs (virtual machines) designed to integrate languages, such as the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and CLR (Common Language Runtime). With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. As modern compilers become more modular, there is potential for a new generation of interesting solutions.
The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges.
Programmers in the late 1990s had to target PCs at the low end that had an abstract model a lot like a fast PDP-11. At the high end, they would have encountered an abstract model like a very fast PDP-11, possibly with two to four (identical) processors. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free/Libre and Open Source Software:
Survey and Study
http://www.flossproject.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Nordic countries were almost self-report be last – the reason for the money
EMC’s global IT Trust Curve According to the report, nearly half (45 percent) of the directors did not trust that their IT infrastructure is at a sufficiently high level of data availability and protection of.
Nordic countries, the result was even more miserable, as the reading rose to here per cent. One in five Nordic business leaders to keep their information technology as a whole unreliable.
The survey asked 3,200 business and IT managers on how well they believe their own company’s IT infrastructure to recover from a variety of difficulties, such as outages, security breaches and data loss
The Nordic countries have often been considered as progressive use of information technology, but the report says the other 16 countries and territories in the control group was ranked second to last, or fifteenth.
The main culprit of IT problems of the respondents chose the money. Nordic 44 per cent of respondents blamed the limits of the budget that the data availability, security, verification and recovery from failure conditions can not be adequately prepared for. Other reasons include a lack of planning and foresight (32 percent), limited knowledge and skills (30 percent), as well as the resources and workload (27 per cent).
“Information Technology four megatrends of cloud, big data, mobile devices, and security. These ripe for use by business needs confidence – it means confidence that the data is safely available in the cloud, that it is lost or stolen, and that it always works. The higher the trust, the more quickly and efficiently get to take advantage of the new. It’s the new potential has a direct impact on the competitiveness, “said EMC’s Country Manager Finland Oula Maijala says the release.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/pohjoismaat+jaivat+itselvityksessa+lahes+viimeisiksi++syyna+raha/a951943
Tomi Engdahl says:
Next Generation USB Connection Definition Underway
USB 3.0 Promoter Group announces development of USB Type-C Specification
http://www.usb.org/press/USB-IF_Press_Releases/Type-C_PR_20131203_Final.pdf
December 3, 2013
The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today announced that the development of the next generation of USB connector has begun.
The new USB Type-C connector, built initially on existing USB 3.1 and USB 2.0 technologies , is being developed to help enable thinner and sleeker product designs
As the new USB Type-C plug and receptacle will not directly mate with existing USB plugs and receptacles (Type-A, Type-B, Micro-B, etc.), the Type-C specification will define passive new-to-existing cables and adapters to allow users to use their existing products.
“Intel is excited to see the development of the new thin Type-C connector as it will enable an entirely new super thin class of devices from phones to tablets, to 2-in-1s, to laptops to desktops and a multitude of other more specific usage devices,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The next USB plug will finally be reversible
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/4/5173686/usb-type-c-connector-specification-announced
Work has begun on a new generation of USB that will break compatibility with existing connectors in order to improve ease of use and allow for thinner devices. The new connector, called Type-C, is an addition to the existing USB 3.1 specification and is expected to be finalized by the middle of 2014. There aren’t any images available yet, but Type-C will be around the size of a Micro USB plug and, like Apple’s Lightning connector, will finally be reversible — in other words, no more frustrated attempts to charge your phone with an upside-down cable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Techmeme finally posts stories to its Facebook page
http://news.techmeme.com/131204/facebook
we’ve begun posting a selection of Techmeme stories to our Facebook page. Unlike our Twitter feed, our Facebook page won’t include every headline we feature, just the biggest stories of the day, as they happen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Valve joins the Linux Foundation ahead of SteamOS launch
Company hopes to “compel hardware manufacturers to prioritize support for Linux.”
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/12/valve-joins-the-linux-foundation-ahead-of-steamos-launch/
Following the official unveiling of its Linux-based SteamOS back in September, Valve has announced that it is joining The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit group of companies and individuals devoted to promoting and advancing the open source community.
The membership comes with some benefits to Valve, including the ability to help guide overall Linux development through member councils and workgroups. The move may be more important as a signal of Valve’s commitment to the platform, though, both developmentally and financially.
“Joining the Linux Foundation is one of many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming,” Valve’s Mike Sartain said in a statement. “Through these efforts, we hope to contribute tools for developers building new experiences on Linux, compel hardware manufacturers to prioritize support for Linux, and ultimately deliver an elegant and open platform for Linux users.”
Valve’s support for open-source gaming has come a long way since the company said it had no plans for a Linux version of Steam back in 2010
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible
You can’t jam ‘em into existing slots, though… Apple-inspired connector to debut next year
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/05/lighting_strikes_usb_bosses_bus_future_connectors_will_be_reversible/
USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible.
Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
That’s big improvement over existing USB 3.0 micro “Franken-connector” jacks which extend the tiny “USB 2.0 Micro B” connector with a bigger, USB 3.0 plug. This compromise came about because of the need to ensure backwards compatibility with USB 2.0-only systems. USB 3.0’s performance improvements are delivered through an entirely separate bus.
The new connector will still carry two separate buses – though not necessarily simultaneously – but will not fit into existing USB ports of any kind.
Speaking of power, the Type C jack will support power charging across a range of voltages in order to support not only devices able to operate off standard USB power lines, but also kit like laptops that require much more power than USB usually delivers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China Prefers Sticking With Dying Windows XP To Upgrading
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/05/032202/china-prefers-sticking-with-dying-windows-xp-to-upgrading
“China says it wants Microsoft to extend support for Windows XP because that will help in its fight to stop proliferation of pirated Microsoft software.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In the cloud storage gateway game? Prepare to be AMAZONED
The Bezos boys are coming
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/05/cloud_gateway_biz_amazon/
Jeff Bezos’s big biffing business is building its own cloud storage gateway hardware to get data into Amazon’s S3, striking fear and loathing into the hearts of existing storage gateway suppliers.
Amazon’s existing Storage Gateway is software-only, and runs in a VM in a customer’s own data centre server and moves data back and forth, using CIFS and NFS, between Amazon’s S3 cloud and the storage array’s in said customer’s data centre.
It supports both VMware and Hyper-V and is a dedicated on/off-ramp to S3 and Glacier. Competing cloud storage gateways from Avere, Nasuni, Panzura, Riverbed, Microsoft’s StorSimple and TwinStrata are on/off-ramps to multiple cloud storage services suppliers and are not locked in to Amazon, or Azure in StorSimple’s case.
The product “is a complete, plug-in replacement for your existing physical tape infrastructure.” As a VM it can also run in the Amazon cloud as an EC2 AMI (Amazon Machine Image).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Western Digital My Cloud
This Cloud Is All Yours
http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/12/western-digital-my-cloud/
It’s almost impossible these days not to create digital “baggage.” You start by backing up your PC’s data. Then the rest of your devices need more storage space — from backups to storing secondary media libraries, offloading photos, and more. If you’re like me, you may have turned to a cloud-based storage service for help.
But with the Western Digital’s WD My Cloud, a 2TB external NAS (network-attached storage) device, you can create your own personal cloud in your home, consolidating your data within easy reach — not on some server in San Jose. Because this external hard drive connects via an Ethernet cable to your wireless router rather than the traditional USB to your PC, your iOS and Android devices — in fact, any Wi-Fi-enabled mobile device — can read and write to the drive.
My Cloud provides enough capacity to bring all your files to one centralized place and gives you a deep storage well for your mobile devices — without relying on paid external cloud services, which generally cost at least $10 a month depending on your storage level. You only pay about 30 bucks more for My Cloud — so compared to services like Dropbox, Box, et al., it offers instant return on investment.