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.
1,455 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Not so Saucy after all: Ubuntu reveals Mirless Salamander… and what, no Britney?
Falls back on Plan B, but Plan B is annoying
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/18/ubuntu_13_10_final/
The Ubuntu that Canonical has delivered this autumn is notable for what’s missing.
Canonical has delivered Ubuntu 13.10 on time. Saucy Salamander, as this release is known, has a few new features but the real news is what’s not there: Mir/XMir.
Ubuntu 13.10 was to mark the turning point of what may be Ubuntu’s biggest leap to date – replacing the ageing X graphics stack with its own homegrown Mir system. Mir is Ubuntu’s replacement for the X Window System and is designed to help Ubuntu shed the confines of the desktop.
Mir will allow Canonical to run Ubuntu on mobile and tablet devices, as well as the desktop, sharing a common code base among the various form factors. XMir referred to the fact Mir shipped with a old X server and would, when faced with unsupported drivers, gracefully fall back to X.
In my testing, XMir worked as advertised, handling two Intel graphics cards with open source drivers and falling back to X on a proprietary card.
A mere two weeks ahead of the final release, though, Canonical changed its mind about using Mir as the default in this release. Citing “outstanding technical difficulties”, Canonical developer Oliver Ries announced the company would push back the move to XMir as the default graphics system.
When can we expect Mir/XMir? Next Spring’s 12.04 is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, which makes it unlikely that Canonical would make the move to XMir then either. That means XMir/Mir may not move to default status until this time next year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox 26 – disciplinary to add-on starting
The Mozilla Foundation has released Firefox 26 web browser. It includes an interesting novelty that is associated with Java and other add-ons in the future. Firefox to put it under control.
Firefox 26 is released, and it can be downloaded from the Mozilla site.
Mozilla has already told the project target. Browsers are still widely used add-ons that play online content. Familiar with add-ons such as Adobe Flash, Oracle’s Java and Microsoft’s Silverlight.
Unfortunately, the add-ons are also a major cause of procrastination browser, crashes and security problems. Mozilla would like why curbs additional parts of the system.
Firefox 26 for change begins with Java.
Under normal circumstances, Java is not active, so that it does not affect the performance of the browser.
Add-ons can be activated only if the user clicks on the website of the Java content.
In the future, the same approach is to be extended to other add-ons. The only exception is in Flash. Mozilla, the reason is that some of the websites for Flash content is “hidden”, in which case the user is difficult to activate it
Mozilla Add-ons consider all of the use of days gone by leaving a technique. Mobile devices add-ons is limited. For example, Apple has blocked Flash from full use of iPhones and iPad tablets. Mozilla is encouraging web developers to avoid the use of additional components.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/firefox_26_kurinpalautus_lisaosille_alkaa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Much of the laptops chargers may interfere with the operation of other electrical equipment. The pan-European study shows that only a quarter of the chargers were compliant.
The study says tuk (Safety and Chemicals Agency), which explained the situation, with the 18 other EU;’s market authority.
Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC electromagnetic compatibility) to ensure that electrical equipment is functioning properly in conjunction with other same platform of devices. Products tested, only 23 percent met all the requirements of the EMC.
Shortcomings of electromagnetic compatibility can affect the operation of other electrical equipment.
Laptop chargers surveillance project was carried out during the year. Finland was tested in ten different products available here. Two of them were placed the ban on exports. In addition, given a few comments on labeling and documentation deficiencies.
“In most cases, in charge devices with markings and documents were not in order, was also exceeded emissions requirements,”
According to him, the campaign results show that the laptops charging equipment manufacturers electromagnetic compatibility still a lot of room for improvement.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/suuri_osa_kannettavien_latureista_ongelmaisia
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Goes Around Comes Around
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=270366&
Cloud-based software seems to work well. It reminds me of pre-Internet times when I rented time on corporate mainframes at night and loaded data over the telephone. Funny how things stay the same even though they change.
This statement was made by a user of an entirely browser-based simulation platform who obviously has seen at least 40 years of progress in technological development. It reflects a positive attitude towards new technologies and, in particular, cloud computing, based on experience with it and on the perception of a reassuring continuity.
This continuity or reappearance of certain practices lies in the common use of hardware and the “on-demand” payment structure for computing time, and also in shared computing resources. However, whereas this was once a necessity, due to its scarce availability, nowadays it’s a commodity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
November NPD: PS4 is ‘top-selling’ console, Xbox One is ‘fastest-selling’ [Update: Nintendo boasts big numbers, too]
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/12/12/november-npd-ps4-is-top-selling-console-xbox-one-is-fastest/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Said to Mull Designing Chips in Threat to Intel
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/google-said-to-mull-designing-chips-in-threat-to-intel.html
Google Inc. (GOOG) is considering designing its own server processors using technology from ARM Holdings Plc (ARM), said a person with knowledge of the matter, a move that could threaten Intel Corp. (INTC)’s market dominance.
By using its own designs, Google could better manage the interactions between hardware and software, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Google, among the largest buyers of server processors, has made no decision and plans could change, said the person.
“We are actively engaged in designing the world’s best infrastructure,” said Liz Markman, a spokeswoman for Google. “This includes both hardware design (at all levels) and software design.” Markman declined to say whether the company may develop its own chips.
Google has been designing its own data centers around the world with servers to power search, video, online communications and other features. Moving into chip design could take away revenue from Intel, which has counted on Internet companies to help drive processor sales.
Job openings at Google include one for a “digital design engineer” with qualifications in ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, a commonly-used chip.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digia announced Qt to a new version – better support for iOS for Android and
Finnish software company in Digia announced on Thursday, the software developers at Qt 5.2 version of the tool. The new version improves support for the Android and iOS operating systems.
After the update, the application developer can use the same software code of any Linux operating system, Windows, Android devices, iOS in Mac OS X, and BlackBerry devices. There is also some initial support for Windows RT.
Still Android and iOS support is missing some APIs: Qt WebKit, Qt Qt Bluetooth and NFC (expected to be added in future versions)
Digia says it will invest heavily Qt business activity and particularly on mobile development.
Digia also announced Qt cloud services.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/digia+julkisti+qtsta+uuden+version++parempi+tuki+ioslle+ja+androidille/a953702
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Are So Many IT Projects Failing?
http://www.cio.com/article/744168/Why_Are_So_Many_IT_Projects_Failing_
A recent study reports that 50 percent of companies had an IT project fail in the last 12 months. Business leaders who blame IT are missing the real project management issues.
Fifty percent of businesses had an IT project fail during the last year, according to a survey by cloud portfolio management provider Innotas. The primary reason, according to 74 percent of respondents, was a lack of resources to meet project demands.
Where have all the project managers gone? Is the IT industry suffering a shortage of employees with these skills?
Not necessarily, says Dice.com’s president, Shravan Goli. Both supply and demand for project managers has remained consistent, with the number of available positions currently available on Dice.com staying at about 3,200, he says.
What has changed is the qualitative side, Goli says, as project managers’ roles shift, they are expected to take on additional responsibilities above and beyond the fundamental scope of managing each IT project.
“The role has evolved over time, and there are a few trends that may be infringing on the project manager’s core job description,” Goli says.
“The fundamental, core job description remains management and monitoring of project scope, communication between groups, motivating teams to drive delivery,” he says. “But the emergence of the Agile development methodology means that project managers must also take on the role of development lead.”
For companies that adopt Agile, many do see an increased need for project managers to drive delivery of an increasing number of software-based technology solutions and applications. But instead of adding staff and resources, firms instead are delegating these roles to their existing project managers, Goli says.
The shortage of resources could be one reason why many projects fail, says Kern, but there’s also a pervasive mindset that IT is the problem, not the solution.
As organizations move to a more application-centric focus, the number of IT projects increases, and IT departments have trouble saying “no,” Kern says, because of the risk of being seen not as a valuable business partner, but as an expensive cost center.
“We’ve moved away from an era of hardware and operating systems and it’s all about applications. Nobody on the business side cares how solutions are delivered, they care about the value of the application,” Kern says.
This shift puts an increasing burden on IT departments to deliver these valuable applications, even if they’re overworked, understaffed, and have no way to prioritize projects, he says.
“The shift to an application-centric approach means there’s no shortage of demand for project managers to handle these projects. But what IT might say ‘yes’ to today could be irrelevant in six months, so they need to better prioritize their pipeline. Unfortunately, because there’s always this dark cloud of ‘What value do you have? You’re a cost center,’ they feel they have to agree to everything, even if they can’t possibly get it done,” he says.
“Consolidation and cost-cutting have really taken their toll, and there’s not a lot of incentive for businesses to get beyond cost-cutting.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
America’s Incredible Shrinking Information Sector
http://resources.cio.com/ccd/assets/46379/detail
Despite its reputation as the engine of the modern economy, the information industry shed more jobs in the United States from 2001 to 2011 than any other sector except manufacturing.
Tomi says:
Facebook’s monster PHP engine ready to muscle into ARM server chips
It’s not just Google mulling a shift to Intel’s arch rival
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/13/facebook_arm_chips/
Facebook has taken further steps in its quest to run production workloads on ARM-powered servers.
The smoking gun for this dramatic shift was a post by Facebook on the Hip Hop Virtual Machine blog on Thursday that indicated the team is implementing ARM processor support in its translation engine, which turns Facebook’s PHP code into 64-bit x86 instructions to execute on compute nodes. The HHVM is Facebook’s fundamental unit for running its mammoth PHP-based social network.
“Watch for an upcoming post devoted to our ARM port for more details!”
The social networking giant has also contributed a server design to its Open Compute Project scheme named “Group Hug” that allows for swappable CPUs, enabling it to efficiently flip Intel for ARM.
Though Facebook is keen to evaluate ARM chips in production, admittedly this shift will take a long time to play out.
The post came on the same day that Bloomberg claimed Google was planning a shift to ARM-driven servers – a move that severely threatens chip king Intel, and would be equivalent to a massive influx of steroids into the burgeoning ARM ecosystem.
Tomi says:
Tekno Bubble 2.0 is knocking? Shares higher than ever after 2000
Technology shares are traded on the Nasdaq reached last Friday, then from point to the highest since November 2000. The rise were not affected by even the PC and the server to trade the bleak outlook.
On Friday, the stock market went up last week at the end of 1989.98 point, and have continued to rise this week. The increase is fueled optimism especially in the software industry and mobile device component manufacturing, as well as general positive news from the U.S. economy.
PC-to-market news that are still not good. According to IDC’s forecasts for PC shipments will decline this year, up 10.1 per cent, which is the largest ever seen in the area of the drop. The decline is expected to be the fact that users do not have the root causes of PC hardware updates.
The hardware side, growth is expected, for example, in the manufacture of memory, which will help the smartphone sales.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/teknokupla+20+kolkuttelee+osakkeet+korkeammalla+kuin+koskaan+vuoden+2000+jalkeen/a953052
Tomi says:
Lawsuit accuses IBM of hiding China risks amid NSA spy scandal
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/12/us-ibm-lawsuit-idUSBRE9BB1BP20131212
IBM Corp has been sued by a shareholder who accused it of concealing how its ties to what became a major U.S. spying scandal reduced business in China and ultimately caused its market value to plunge more than $12 billion.
IBM lobbied Congress hard to pass a law letting it share personal data of customers in China and elsewhere with the U.S. National Security Agency, in a bid to protect its intellectual property rights, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The plaintiff in the complaint, Louisiana Sheriffs’ Pension & Relief Fund, said this threatened IBM hardware sales in China, particularly given a program known as Prism that let the NSA spy on that country through technology companies such as IBM.
It said this led IBM on October 16 to post disappointing third-quarter results, including drops in China of 22 percent in sales and 40 percent in hardware sales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future of Microsoft as seen by an insider who could be its next CEO
http://qz.com/157521/satya-nadella-the-future-of-microsoft-as-seen-by-an-insider-who-could-be-its-next-ceo/
It’s been a fun couple of weeks for Microsoft watchers. First Ford CEO Alan Mulally dominated headlines as a favorite for the top job at Microsoft, even as his board publicly said he would stay at the auto manufacturer at least through the end of 2014. Then, last night, Bloomberg reported that Steve Mollenkopf, chip-maker Qualcomm’s chief operating officer was in consideration. This morning Mollenkopf was promoted to CEO (paywall) of Qualcomm.
Amid the rumors about external candidates, some Microsoft watchers have focused on Satya Nadella, the Indian-born head of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise division who is known to staff as one of the most articulate and intelligent people in the company.
On how the shift to the cloud is changing how the technology industry works
“In the past, there was hardware, software and platforms on top of which there were applications. Now they’re getting conflated. That is all going to get disrupted by the move to the cloud. Because when somebody is running their application on Azure [Microsoft's cloud platform], they’re not having to buy hardware, to set up their own network, or to do a lot of things that they did in the past. So what used to be these distinct categories are getting mixed up in the move to the cloud.”
On what the cloud business means to Microsoft
“We have a pretty massive commercial business: 58% of our overall business is commercial. That’s about $45 billion of our revenue. Cloud is just emerging but it’s high growth. In the last quarter we the cloud business grew over 100%. Azure is adding over 1000 customers a day and over 50% of Fortune 500 companies are using Azure. There is also the private cloud. We make the cloud infrastructure we’re using available as servers for others, and that is going through double-digit growth both. So all put together we’re doing very well.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
As Software Eats The World, Non-Tech Corporations Are Eating Startups
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/14/as-software-eats-the-world-non-tech-corporations-are-eating-startups/
Netscape founder and VC titan Marc Andreessen famously wrote back in 2011 that software is steadily eating the world, disrupting industries like music, retail and more. Now large corporations in these industries are starting to eat startups.
Over the past year or two, non-tech corporations have begun to actually open their wallets to arm themselves with talent and technology that can help them enter the digital and data-focused world we now live and work in. It’s no longer Google, Facebook and Yahoo that are competing to acquire the best and the brightest startups in Silicon Valley. There are plenty of corporations in retail, health, agriculture, financial services and other industries that are sending their corp-dev talent to scout out possible acquisitions in the Bay Area and beyond.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Evernote for the enterprise: Huddle rolls out notes feature alongside redesigned iOS app
http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/10/evernote-for-the-enterprise-huddle-rolls-out-notes-feature-alongside-redesigned-ios-app/
Over the last few years, cloud-based services like Google Drive and Evernote have changed the way people create and collaborate on documents. But it’s doubtful a major government agency, health care vendor, or financial institution would endorse those products as secure.
Huddle wants those organizations to use Huddle Note.
“It’s kind of like a mini-WordPress [that's] purely enterprise focused,” Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell told VentureBeat.
“It’s easy to roll out Gmail and Google Drive with it, but when you start to get into government documents or other sensitive information, you just can’t use Google Drive — but you still want to create this lightweight content.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analyst Bullish on Professional Workstation Market
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320378&
PCs may be declining as the tablet and smartphone markets gain in popularity and sales, but the market for workstations and professional applications remains quite strong, according to market research firm Jon Peddie Research.
JPR recently completed its collection and analysis of third quarter data and found that, globally, 973,100 workstations have shipped in the third quarter of 2013. This constitutes 3.6% sequential growth for the quarter, in spite of the fact that this quarter is usually seasonally down. The record for shipments of workstations in a quarter stands at 1 million, which was set back in 2011. The firm says it is bullish on the long-term prospects for professional computing, including workstations.
“The workstation market, although not very large compared to the PC market and the tablet market, has a higher selling price, higher ASPs, somewhere between three and five times, compared to PCs,”
Peddie described the difference between workstations and PCs from the perspective of the end user and the kind of experience he or she can expect from each type of machine. “PCs that you and I might buy for instance will be maxed out. Workstations use the same kind of chips as are found in a normal PC. But they are tested more and they run just a little bit slower than they potentially can — because the faster you run on a chip, the hotter it gets and the more often it fails.”
Compared to PCs, tablets, and smartphones, workstations have to be “bullet proof,” he added. “The systems are built more ruggedly and with more testing and care. But they just won’t stop.” He cited the example of an HP workstation which the company uses as a server at JPR, which he described as highly reliable, having been in use for going on five to six years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Regulating the Cloud: Genband CTO Seeks Balance on FCC Tech Council
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320389&
Over-regulation, security, and reliability are the greatest concerns for regulating the cloud, according to the latest appointee to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Technological Advisory Council (TAC).
Kemmerer believes that the task ahead of the FCC is beyond the classical regulatory models it normally uses and involves a complex set of challenges that will therefore require a complex set of solutions. Some of these technologies involve internet-based services, which the FCC has not regulated in the past, he said. Several groups are looking at these issues now — from industry to academia to service providers. “It’s a very wide spectrum of people trying to help the FCC figure out what is the best way to regulate these services without stifling the evolution. It’s a complex set of issues. It’s not easy to do.”
Asked what regulatory issues he expects to see come up in 2014, Kemmerer mentioned the license spectrum and said there was already work going on in that area. “All manner of computing devices generate lots of electronic noise,” he said. Heavy usage of mobile devices could cause us to run out of the spectrum, he added. “A lot of discussion is going on about how to better use the spectrum we have. Resiliency and security issues around the cloud will continue. There’s a great deal of work left to do in those areas.”
There are 95 million wired telephone lines in the United States, according to Kemmerer. About a third of these phones are IP. Two thirds are still conventional wired phone lines. Of the 12,000 TDM switches out there, only about 10% to 20% have converted to IP, while the remaining 80% to 90% still have to make the transition, he said.
“What you can see from those numbers is that maybe half of those lines will be IP by 2016,” Kemmerer went on. “That’s tremendous progress but there’s still a long way to go before reaching the goal of making the entire infrastructure all IP. The FCC has established aggressive goals to achieve this by the end of the decade.”
The current strategy involves carriers modernizing their lines so that their customers have better access to services.
“We are expecting to see some sort of post regulations release,” Kemmerer said. “There is a complex legal process before that happens. In 2014 we’ll see some of those initial steps for some of this regulatory structure and then it will be up to the industry to codify and move there. That is a major step for vendors and enterprise customers as well.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA alleges ‘BIOS plot to destroy PCs’
Un-named PC maker sought help to defeat un-named nation’s PC-bricking plan
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/16/nsa_alleges_bios_plot_to_destroy_pcs/
Senior National Security Agency (NSA) officials have told US news magazine program “60 Minutes” that a foreign nation tried to infect computers with a BIOS-based virus that would have enabled them to be remotely destroyed.
NSA Director General Keith Alexander and Information Assurance Director Debora Plunkett both appeared on the program in an attempt to defend the many unsettling domestic espionage programs revealed by Edward Snowden.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why storage needs Quality of Service
Makes shared storage play nicely
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/16/storage_quality_of_service/
Storage consolidation looks great on paper. Direct-attached storage is notorious for its inefficiency, with some arrays being just 40 per cent occupied or even less.
Providing an Oracle database with 10,000 IOPS could mean aggregating dozens of 15,000 RPM drives, and unless the database is several terabytes in size that is a lot of wasted space.
The alternative is shared storage, probably with virtualisation and thin provisioning to allocate physical disk capacity more efficiently, and perhaps with a Flash tier or cache to boost performance.
As well as reducing wastage, shared storage can also bring other advantages, not least a reduction in the number of points of management.
But what happens if one of your clients or applications doesn’t play well with its fellows – if it is badly behaved and greedy and doesn’t realise that in shared storage “shared” is the operative word?
In many systems, it is all too easy for one application to become the bully in the playground, grabbing too much for itself and leaving the other children crying in the dust.
“Quality of service is more crucial than people give it credit for. It’s a small thing but without it a lot of the value propositions of shared storage go away,” says John Rollason, NetApp’s director of product, solutions and alliances marketing.
“Essentially, if you don’t have QoS on a shared storage platform, you can’t guarantee overall QoS when users move to a virtualised environment. Virtualisation also makes the I/O a lot more random.”
“If you do nothing, the server that demands the most performance will get it – and if that’s your business intelligence system, then response times for the more time-critical production system will suffer. QoS also impedes the service level agreement-driven organisation, and if you cannot set QoS, you punish the user who has simple applications.”
The business intelligence (BI) problem is a big one because more and more BI users want to run their queries against the production data
A heavy database query could also easily soak up all the I/O available, starving the web and email servers that are sharing the same storage.
The first thing is obviously to add QoS mechanisms, assigning priorities to applications. Stopping rogue applications or clients requires other approaches. One of the simpler ways to do it is to apply I/O rate limits to badly behaved applications so they don’t grab everything available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We drill into Google ARM ‘love-in’: ‘They want it for their own s*** and they don’t want Bing to have it’
Custom RAM chippery, low power, and more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/16/google_intel_arm_analysis/
Google, Facebook, and likely other major tech firms are investigating ARM-compatible chips to drive low-power servers, which could ultimately shakeup the types of processors that sit inside data centres.
We were moved to consider the pros and cons of moving away from trusty x86 into the problem-filled world of ARM after a Bloomberg rumor circulated on Thursday that Google was planning to use ARM chips for servers, and after we spotted a smoking gun blogpost by Facebook that indicated it hoped to evaluate ARM systems for production use.
Companies are interested in ARM chips due their historically thrifty power consumption
This customisable architecture is wildly popular in the battery-powered gadget and embedded electronics worlds, where processing performance isn’t key – anything taxing can be offloaded to dedicated silicon – so the chips can be run slower and thus consume even less power.
Compare this to Intel’s CISC (Complex instruction set computing) design, which offers a larger range of operations, has a mountain of legacy tech to support – from 16-bit real mode all the way up to 64-bit protected long mode – and generally runs at higher speeds to give punters the most bang for their bucks. All this adds up to beefier, power guzzling packages.
ARM has for a long time focused on cutting power consumption due to its home markets being mobile and non-performance-demanding devices, whereas Intel previously emphasized speed; chips powered by ARM cores are built from the ground up to sip rather than suck current. The drawback is that they beaver away at a relatively leisurely pace.
Mobes and fondleslabs, ARM. Gaming rigs, x86. Got it. Where does Google and Facebook fit in?
Consumer-serving web giants spend billions a year on infrastructure and millions on electricity bills. For these companies, data centres are a great sucking chest wound in their annual budget, and if you can save money, you will.
A key question here is how much of a company’s given workload can be shifted onto minimalist, low-power and slower processors. For Google, its compute-intensive backend needs the sheer might of Intel’s powerful Xeon chips, but for other tasks such as front-end web serving, and the controlling of storage, it may make sense to deploy ARM.
Facebook is a simpler proposition – its newly minted AI group aside – as the social network’s workload is less CPU-intensive than Google’s. But even here there are problems: “What we would like to see in an ARM server CPU is a … minimum frequency of 2.5GHz,” Facebook tech strategist Vijay Rao said in late October. “That gives us the ability to scale across our software from frontend to backend.”
ARM server startup Calxeda’s most recent 32-bit Midway chips had a clock rate of between 1.1 and 1.8GHz, so there is a way to go here.
Meanwhile, 64-bit ARM servers are due to come to market next year, with the first likely due from startup Applied Micro,
The next step would be porting Google’s software over to ARM systems. The ad giant – a one hundred percent Linux shop, at least in the data centre – has worked hard to create a relatively small, monolithic software stack: assuming it isn’t using a Facebook-style x86-64 translator for its code, testing and deploying on ARM will be straightforward for Googlers, although there are all sorts of optimisations that should be explored.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM acquires lighting specialist Geomerics
A shot in the ARM for mobile gamers
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2319103/arm-acquires-lighting-specialist-geomerics
CHIP DESIGNER ARM Holdings has announced the acquisition of games lighting technology company Geomerics.
ARM bought Geomerics, which specialises in lighting for the games development industry, for an undisclosed sum with a view to adding further to its mobile development capabilities.
“The innovative technologies being developed by Geomerics are already revolutionizing the console gaming experience and are set to rapidly accelerate the transition to photo realistic graphics in mobile,” said ARM EVP and GM of its Media Processing Division Pete Hutton.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What happens when you give undergrads $2,500 to build a HPC rig out of commodity parts? This…
The SC13 Commodity Track competition results are in
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/17/scc13_diy_iron_results/
The team from Bentley University and Northeastern University took the first ever Commodity Track Overall Championship award at the recently concluded SC13 Student Cluster Competition.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exponential Algorithm In Windows Update Slowing XP Machines
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/16/1959259/exponential-algorithm-in-windows-update-slowing-xp-machines
“An interesting bug regarding update dependency calculation has been found in Windows XP. By design, machines using Windows Update retrieve patch information from Microsoft’s update servers (or possibly WSUS in a company setting). That patch information contains information about each patch: what software it applies to and, critically, what historic patch or patches the current patch supersedes. Unfortunately, the Windows Update client components used an algorithm with exponential scaling when processing these lists. Each additional superseded patch would double the time taken to process the list.”
“On a new machine, that processing appeared to be almost instantaneous. It is now very slow.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
DEATH of the CHANNEL? Resellers, distributors – your countdown to oblivion starts NOW
A little economics, a little evolutionary biology, and you’re toast
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/12/17/tim_calls_time_on_the_channel/
Whither the channel when it’s all in the cloud? Whence the box-shifter when no one actually buys PCs any more? The answer is, of course, that once a particular business model has no more business then that business model ends.
It is, however, possible to look at this in rather more sophisticated terms.
The most obvious, since we’re talking about business, is through the lens of economics. And to the economist the ability to make a profit means that whoever is making that profit must, by definition, be adding value. The reverse isn’t quite true, it’s not always the case that adding value will lead to profit but it’s still a good indication.
So for those in the channel at present the question is, well, is it possible to identify the value that is being added? The answer will be different from different parts of the channel.
For a simple box-shifting distie it’s difficult to see what the value added is beyond the basic logistics of the process.
For the distributor with a wide range of equipment and spares and repairs, well, if people will indeed pay for the just in time delivery then there’s a margin to be made there. But for both the competition is only a click or two away on Amazon, and so margins are going to be squeezed yet again.
For those providing an actual solution to a problem it will be rather different: as it will also be depending upon which solution is being offered. Basic networking is now simple enough that no one’s going to be making a living at it but those who really are adding value in the eyes of the consumer will be able to carry on.
Value-add… sometimes it’s all about knowledge
If in the world where people get their tablets from the phone shop, their PCs off Amazon and the software out of the cloud, if in that world you can still add value then there’s a good chance of survival. But no value added and there’s no place in that ecosystem for a business.
Which brings us to the second way we can view this, from the evolution point of view.
It’s often described as the survival of the fittest but that’s not really quite right. For it is the environment itself that does the selecting.
We can see the channel environment changing around us and the question is, well, where’s my niche?
But the general idea should be obvious: as the business environment changes then so too will the things that small businesses have to do to survive.
Peak support services?
There is one further pressure and that’s best explained by an analogy with the car industry. The point is that all computing is simply getting so much more reliable. An early car needed almost as many people to run it as a coach and horses did.
But we can see quite clearly that while car ownership per head has continued to grow in these recent decades the size of that support ecosystem has not. We very definitely have fewer filling stations than we did, for example.
And I would maintain that something akin to that is happening in computing. Yes, the population of computers is still expanding rapidly (not least that computer that is a smartphone) but that doesn’t mean that the population of people to service those computers is going to expand. Indeed, I think we’re at, or have passed, the peak level of the support industry.
Which leaves us with three points: the first being that the industry as a whole is going to be shrinking, the support and channel industry that is, despite the overall expansion of the computing market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT disaster : officials are able to buy pencils, not IT systems
The United States has begun to wash the aftermath of federal HealthCare.gov the failed project.
Originally a 93 million -value of money in the end the project was burned $ 400 million . When the system is turned on , only six users managed to get the first day of the health insurance service.
Their failure is not many experts on specific cases , but the public IT procurement plaguing the wider problems .
“The current way of managing and acquiring the federal government for it: s is largely out of order. HealthCare.gov failure is the latest reminder of this, ” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Chairman Robert Atkinson wrote in November on their blog.
The United States has begun to wash the aftermath of federal HealthCare.gov the failed project.
Originally a 93 million -value of money in the end the project was burned $ 400 million . When the system is turned on , only six users managed to get the first day of the health insurance service.
Their failure is not many experts on specific cases , but the public IT procurement plaguing the wider problems .
“The current way of managing and acquiring the federal government for it: s is largely out of order. HealthCare.gov failure is the latest reminder of this, ” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Chairman Robert Atkinson wrote in November on their blog.
One of the biggest problems is that many public sector organizations are driven the creation of fixed contracts. They may take years before the contract is finalized.
HealthCare.gov case, the system was decided to purchase the CGI from the end of 2011.
“The state is a good buy yesterday’s technology today,” Hettinger said.
In many cases, the agreements focus too much on what technologies should be introduced. The problem that actually needs resolution , will the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the Atkinson , the less attention.
Cheapest price to win
Procurement officials are most interested to declare the lowest bidder as the winner , rather than the contract was awarded to the person who is able to perform most of the project , critics point out .
Responsible for procurement officials ” may well be able to buy pencils, but they are not always so good to buy a complex IT systems,” Atkinson download .
“Too many CIOs are in the boiler room in ensuring that the e-mails go time,” Atkinson points out.
Things do not make it easier outdated information systems, which are still a number of public sector organizations use. For many authorities, new and old systems integration is a major problem.
Moreover, the current procurement practices foster greater self- houses that projects are progressing slowly
Federal should prefer to identify smaller and the best providers in their field for each technology .
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/itkatastrofi+virkamiehet+osaavat+ostaa+lyijykynia+eivat+itjarjestelmia/a954340
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why IT execs stick with cloud computing despite NSA snooping scandal
The benefits of cloud technology are a powerful draw, and IT execs are taking steps to mitigate their risk
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/why-it-execs-stick-cloud-computing-despite-nsa-snooping-scandal-232208?source=IFWNLE_nlt_cloud_2013-12-09
Explosive revelations in the past six months about the U.S. government’s massive cyber-spying activities have spooked individuals, rankled politicians and enraged privacy watchdogs, but top IT executives aren’t panicking — yet.
So far, they are monitoring the issue, getting informed and taking steps to mitigate their risk in various ways. But the alarming reports haven’t prompted them to roll back their decisions to host applications and data in the cloud.
That’s the consensus from about 20 high-ranking IT executives interviewed in North America and Europe about the effect that the U.S. National Security Agency’s snooping practices have had on their cloud computing strategy. The news broke in June, after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began leaking the earth-shaking secrets to the media.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rambus and Micron Bury the Hatchet; All Memory Players Now License Rambus Tech
by Ryan Smith on December 11, 2013 10:00 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7579/rambus-and-micron-bury-the-hatchet-all-memory-players-now-license-rambus-tech
Bringing an end to a saga that has spanned over a decade and most of the life of this site, what’s widely considered the final major legal battle between Rambus and a memory manufacturer has come to an end. Burying the hatchet, Micron and Rambus ended their fight this week with Micron finally agreeing to license Rambus’s technologies and to pay royalties for their use.
According to the Wall Street Journal Micron will be paying Rambus a 0.6% royalty rate on all impacted products, which given Rambus’s wide patent holdings essentially covers all forms of DDR SDRAM and in turn impacts vast majority of Micron’s RAM offerings. The agreement will run for 7 years, with Micron having the option to renew it at that time (as some of Rambus’s patents should still be valid even in 2020). Notably the royalty rates are capped at $10 million per quarter – adding up to $280 million over the period of the 7 year agreement – so the final price tag will depend on Micron’s DRAM revenue if they end up staying under the cap.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft now using next-gen Roslyn C#, Visual Basic compilers in house
‘Highly usable’ public preview could arrive next year
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/17/microsoft_roslyn_dogfooding/
After more than a year of silence on the subject, Microsoft’s Managed Languages team is once again talking about with Roslyn, the radically redesigned version of its C# and Visual Basic compilers.
But in a blog post on Monday, Microsoft manager Matt Gertz said that not only has work on Roslyn been progressing, but the new compilers are now in a mature enough state that Microsoft has begun using them internally for some of its own projects.
What makes the Roslyn compilers different is that they have been completely rewritten in managed Visual Basic and C# – unlike earlier versions, which were written in C++.
That allows the compilers to act as services for consumption by other software written in C# or Visual Basic. Every part of the compilation process can be used by outside programs for such tasks as code syntax parsing, binding, and even outputting .Net intermediate language (IL) on the fly.
Visual Studio itself is expected to be one of the first beneficiaries of this technology. Instead of having its own syntax parsing component, future versions of the IDE will be able to do syntax coloring, code hinting, code completion, and other parser functions using those featuresof the actual C# and Visual Basic compilers.
But third-party software will be able to take advantage of Roslyn, too
Tomi says:
Standardized Laptop Charger Approved By IEC
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/12/17/1422245/standardized-laptop-charger-approved-by-iec
“The IEC, the standards body which wrote the phone charger specification used in the EU, has approved a standardised laptop charger. While the ‘DC Power Supply for Portable Personal Computer’ doesn’t have a legal mandate behind it, the IEC is still optimistic that it will lead to a reduction in electronics waste and make it easier to find a replacement charger.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Stacks & Security Key for IBM in Server Market
The MCU is dead, says IBM technologist
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320403&
According to a top IBM technologist, the future of cloud computing depends on 3D chip stacks and new kinds of accelerators for functions like security, as the industry faces processor shrinkage slowing down while processor integration increases.
To him, 3D stacking is clearly the Next Big Thing. Instead of the continuation of Moore’s law, engineers will increasingly look to a different sort of packaging. Meyerson believes that density can be achieved by combining multiple functions. “It’ll look like a single chip, but it will be about 50 chips stacked one on top of the other.”
Meyerson believes in the importance of solid-state devices in storage in servers. “Ultimately, we’ll hopefully start to see things like storage class memory. We’ll actually be able to integrate this, but it will be at the same clutch time as external storage.”
Security at all levels
The other major shift Meyerson underscored was towards more integrated security on servers:
Cloud security and other elements will be dramatically upgraded. Systems don’t have it on the inside. There will be elements of the server that, in and of themselves, add dramatically to the security of that system. Hackers are going to get smarter, and the systems will also have to get smarter at what you might call self-defense.
Meyerson pointed to the need for security at all levels, including the high end, which IBM’s servers are known for offering.
If you shut down for even a few moments your losses can be catastrophic. The inherent security of our capabilities is important. You have to offer more than just what I call “Here’s a server, good luck to you.” The impact of outage and the impact of breach becomes extraordinarily problematic. We run many of the world’s banking systems. People are putting important stuff in the cloud.
“My joke is ‘What’s going to come after silicon? Silicon.’ ”
Coherently Attached Processor Interface
Meanwhile, coprocessors and accelerators linked to microprocessors on coherent APIs are a major part of the future of server processors. “There is a need for accelerated systems and certain types of microprocessors like FPGAs that contain huge amounts of processing power. It would be great to run this through on an accelerated pace.”
In this context, Meyerson mentioned CAPI, the Coherently Attached Processor Interface, which provides a high-speed bus on top of PCI-E, replacing the older GX bus.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LG announces Chromebase, a Chrome OS all-in-one computer
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/17/5221906/lg-announces-chromebase-a-chrome-os-all-in-one-computer
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Google’s Chrome OS is typically found in inexpensive Chromebook laptops, and occasionally a Chromebox desktop as well. At next month’s Consumer Electronics Show, however, LG will put it into a desktop computer monitor. The company has just announced the Chromebase, a 21.5-inch all-in-one computer that runs the minimal OS, with an unnamed Intel Celeron processor, 2GB of memory, and 16GB of solid state storage housed underneath the monitor’s 1080p IPS display.
While the computer comes with its own keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, USB ports and networking, it sounds like it can also still act as a monitor for another PC, thanks to an HDMI input around back.
It’s worth noting that individual users aren’t LG’s primary target with the Chromebase, though. In a press release accompanying the announcement, LG writes that it expects the Chromebase to be espeically well received in schools, hotels, and call centers, among other businesses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alternative to Windows XP
Ubuntu Emerges as Free Alternative Operating System to Windows
http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/article/2465/alternative-windows-xp-ubuntu-emerges-free-alternative-operating-system-windows
As support for Windows XP ends on April 8 of next year, security concerns abound, and there are growing talks about possible alternatives to Windows XP, including operating systems (OSs) such as Ubuntu Linux.
According to an industry source on December 15, there is a heated discussion about replacing Windows XP with an alternative OS in IT communities at home and abroad, since the market for PC operating systems (OS) has been divided into largely MS windows and Mac OS, without any other significant operating systems. But the issue of a third option has now become a reality, as Windows XP is going to be retired.
There are various talks on how to continue using the retired Windows XP and how to install an alternative OS to replace it.
The most talked-about OS is Linux. Linux has been around for a long time, but has not before been easily usable to average users because of the limited driver support of graphic cards and compatibility with propriety Microsft software. And it was difficult to install. However, Ubuntu Linux has evolved to the point where novice users can install it easily. It is free, and basic programs come automatically installed. Also, users can install various multimedia codec and extensions such as Adobe Flash easily during installation.
According to a software industry source, “Ubuntu does not support as wide an array of programs like Windows but is easy to install, and has evolved into a highly sophisticated program,” adding, “PC users today do not need clunky packaged software. In a desktop environment today, users can perform most of the tasks with the aid of a simple browser.”
Ubuntu not only offers Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox but a browser for Linux, as well. When using Chrome, users can synchronize their preferences settings, and Internet surfing and working with basic documents becomes an easy task.
Ubuntu not only offers Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox but a browser for Linux, as well. When using Chrome, users can synchronize their preferences settings, and Internet surfing and working with basic documents becomes an easy task.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Company management does not even trust his own decisions
Four out of ten business leaders do not trust companies to decisions because they lack the background knowledge or information can not be accessed easily enough .
Harvard Business Review, analysis services , QlikTech ‘s survey , only 13 percent of respondents believe strongly that they can not even trust yourself to decision making.
Central problems , including increased access to information and decision-making in situations of internal and external quality of the information .
The respondents also felt that the organization’s internal barriers negatively affect the decision-making process .
As many as 45 per cent were of the opinion that the greatest cause harm to the decision-making behind closed doors without the presence of real people, as well as senior management experience in an exuberant confidence .
Four out of ten respondents also mentioned the lack of cooperation hindered their decision-making into one thing.
” The knowledge can now be accessed so much more easily than , say, ten years ago. Still, the survey shows that it does not know how to properly support decision making “, QlikTech Finland and the Baltic Country Manager Jarmo Rajala says the release .
He points out that today’s leader must be able to make decisions there and then.
” Self-confidence and confidence will certainly increase by the fact that relevant information is easily accessible and quickly distributed to others,” Rajala believes.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/yritysjohto+ei+luota+edes+omiin+paatoksiinsa/a954958
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paging Alex Trebek: The Top 10 ‘What Is’ Google Searches of 2013
Read more: The Top 10 ‘What Is’ Google Searches of 2013 | TIME.com http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/17/google-what-is-searches/#ixzz2nozvS7X9
Tomi Engdahl says:
Corporate-Owned Smartphones Back in Vogue in Q3
http://www.cio.com/article/744513/Corporate_Owned_Smartphones_Back_in_Vogue_in_Q3
A larger share of smartphones used for business purposes were coA steady increase in corporate purchasing through the first three quarters of the year hints that enterprises are already rethinking how far BYOD (bring-your-own-device) programs will be allowed to expand, according to Strategy Analytics.rporate-owned
IDG News Service (London Bureau) — A steady increase in corporate purchasing through the first three quarters of the year hints that enterprises are already rethinking how far BYOD (bring-your-own-device) programs will be allowed to expand, according to Strategy Analytics.
Seventy-three million smartphones were purchased in the third quarter by business users directly, or by companies for their business users, representing a 34 percent increase over total business smartphone volumes a year ago, Strategy Analytics said.
That means more than 35 percent of smartphones used for business purposes were corporate-owned, compared to 32 percent in the same quarter a year ago, and 31 percent in the first quarter.
BYOD may very well be an unstoppable trend in many regions in the world, but it’s not too surprising that some momentum would swing back to corporate-owned devices,
Leif-Olof Wallin, research vice president at Gartner, agreed: “There is still a gap between CIOs and employees,” he said.
“More and more CIOs are starting to realize that BYOD projects aren’t cheaper than corporate-owned devices. They are more likely 5 percent to 10 percent more expensive,” Wallin said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fedora 20 Heisenbug makes ARM chips ‘a primary architecture’
Linux distro fashions boards to surf low-power tsunami
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/fedora_20_release/
Fedora 20 has been released with expanded support for ARM-compatible processors and a guarantee of continued heavy development for the low-power chips.
The latest version of the venerable Linux distribution was announced on Tuesday, and comes with official support for ARMv7hl (hardware floating-point, little endian) devices, and promises that AArch64 support is underway.
“For 10 years, Fedora has not only led the way as a cutting-edge, open operating system, but the Fedora Project has also served as a paradigm for other open source communities on a global scale,” the company gushed in a canned quote.
This means that it will be easier for chip-wranglers to run Fedora on ARM-based devices. The Fedora project has so far released four board-specific OS images capable of running a stable Fedora: the BeagleBone Black, Wandboard, CompuLab TrimSlice, and Calxeda EnergyCore server, and Versatile Express for Cortex-A9 and A15 emulation through QEMU virtualization.
The expanded support comes at a time of fevered interest in the low-power processor cores, as a variety of companies try to spread them beyond their traditional home of mobile devices to laptops and servers.
Google is rumored to be contemplating a mass ARM server shift, and Facebook is devoting resources to allow it to test out the platform more intensively.
Other new features in Fedora 20 (code-named Heisenbug) include the inclusion of the Apache Hadoop 2.2.0 software package so users can simply yum install Hadoop to start working with the data-manipulation framework.
Though Hadoop is designed to be run on clusters of many machines, it is usable on a single box.
Fedora 20 also comes with expanded support for clouds via “First-Class Cloud Images”, which are disk images tested for stable running on Amazon Web Services and OpenStack.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM predicts glorious tech future made possible by $IBMmarketing
Poor track record of scrying muddies optimistic pronouncements
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/ibm_predictions/
IBM’s latest “five in five” predictions – five things that may happen in the next five years – ignore social and economic realities to alert us to new technology that’ll be prevalent (and mostly made by IBM).
The predictions were published on Tuesday, and are centered around Big Blue’s major product push of “cognitive computing” (henceforth abbreviated to $IBMmarketing). This draws upon multiple investments by the company in technologies ranging from its Jeopardy-playing Watson supercomputer, to neuromorphic chips and neural-network research.
For this year’s “five in five”, IBM predicts that, by 2019, online classrooms will use $IBMmarketing to provide tailored educational programs for individual students; that $IBMmarketing will allow storekeepers to “beat online” shops by carefully tracking the flow of goods through their business; that doctors will use DNA-specific treatments and DNA testing to provide patient care; a digital guardian that uses $IBMmarketing will follow you round the internet to perform semi-autonomous security checks; and finally cities will start to reach out to your smartphone and/or fondleslab through the magic of $IBMmarketing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Healthcare IT’s Achilles’ Heel: Sensors
http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/12/17/2135201/healthcare-its-achilles-heel-sensors
“Tech publications and pundits alike have crowed about the benefits we’re soon to collectively reap from healthcare analytics. In theory, sensors attached to our bodies (and appliances such as the fridge) will send a stream of health-related data — everything from calorie and footstep counts to blood pressure and sleep activity — to the cloud, which will analyze it for insight; doctors and other healthcare professionals will use that data to tailor treatments or advise changes in behavior and diet. But the sensors still leave a lot to be desired:”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Healthcare IT’s Achilles’ Heel: Sensors
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/healthcare-its-achilles-heel-sensors/
Fitbit, FuelBand, and ingestible sensors aren’t quite enough to support researchers’ grandiose dreams for healthcare IT.
For several quarters, tech publications and pundits alike have crowed about the benefits we’re soon to collectively reap from healthcare analytics. In theory, sensors attached to our bodies (and appliances such as the fridge) will send a stream of health-related data—everything from calorie and footstep counts to blood pressure and sleep activity—to the cloud, which will analyze it for insight; doctors and other healthcare professionals will use that data to tailor treatments or advise changes in behavior and diet. If nothing else, it could translate into significant revenues for everyone from data-analytics firms to hardware builders.
That healthcare data could also come from a variety of sources, not just a set of devices or sensors
“if it’s talking into our iPhone, where we do our grocery shopping, our exercise habits, there are many behavioral outputs that others like Amazon, like Google, are measuring about us that our caregivers don’t have access to and we as patients can’t use.”
Health apps for mobile devices aren’t much better when it comes to accurately recording physiological information; the need to manually input data makes them somewhat cumbersome to use, and people often give up after a few days or weeks.
Once more sensitive hardware arrives on the market—whether in the form of wristbands, digital pills, or something else entirely—it could give doctors, researchers, and patients better access to “good” data that can actually make a difference in research and treatment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco takes on AWS with cloudy desktop-as-a-service plan
VMware and Citrix dive into DaaS for private or public clouds
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/cisco_takes_on_aws_with_cloudy_desktopasaservice_plan/
Works with VMware and Citrix to deliver DaaS from your bit barn or the cloud Cisco and VMware have responded to Amazon Web Services Workspaces desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) plan with their very own offering that can be deployed to private or public clouds.
The new offering blends VMware’s recently-acquired Deskone with a Cisco Validated Design (that’s Cisco-speak for a reference architecture) said to be capable of delivering 252 virtual desktops from a single UCS server. There’s also a Citrix-centric version of the Validated Design.
The collaboration is being pitched at service providers keen to kick off a DaaS offering or organisations looking for a simple route to desktop virtualisation (VDI) delivered from a private cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yes, you ARE a member of a global technology elite
Analyst estimates just one in 318 humans is an IT pro
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/idc_worldwide_software_developer_and_ict_skilled_worker_estimates/
Analyst firm IDC has released a study titled the “2014 Worldwide Software Developer and ICT-Skilled Worker Estimates” that offers a guess at how many people are what it calls “ICT-skilled workers”.
The definition is a bit floppy, with IDC suggesting it covers “professional and hobbyist software developers and information and communications technology (ICT)–skilled workers”.
The numbers are interesting: 29 million people fit the description above, with 11 million working as software developers and a further 7.5 million “hobbyist” developers. That leaves about 11.5 million in other technology gigs on top of the 11 million professional developers for a global IT pro total of 22.5 million.
The United Nations suggests Earth is home to 7.162 billion people.
USA emerges as the home to 22 per cent of ICT-skilled workers, followed by India with 10.4 per cent and China with 7.6 per cent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Headhunter prescibes mentor theraphy for aging tech bosses
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/20_somethings_show_cios_the_ropes/
CIOs need to start getting down with the kids and being mentored by their under-30 employees if they want to hold onto their jobs, a partner at a top recruitment firm has warned.
CIOs 15 years ago were effectively “the chief technologist in a firm”, said Holley. While they might be expected to be absolutely knowledgeable on all matters technical, they were quite subservient to the board. A decade ago, they were starting to be considered more of a “peer” but had to fit in with a commercial strategy decided elsewhere, and were still unlikely to be considered for other roles.
Now, they were potentially commanding much greater respect within organisations, with knowledge of multiple channels, (potentially) “enormous” budgets, and, hopefully, the proven ability to lead and manage change. As such, they were able to drive the commercial strategy of the business.
“IT hasn’t always attracted the best graduates,” she said diplomatically. While they often had massive IQs and excellent problem-solving skills, she noted, they were expected to have all the answers themselves.
Be a coach… you’re not making clones
Presumably they might even be able to explain to younger staff that spaffing your drunken indiscretions all over social media might actually be injurious to your career progression.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Datawind Not Blowing Smoke: $38 Tablet Coming To the USDatawind Not Blowing Smoke: $38 Tablet Coming To the US
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/12/17/198226/datawind-not-blowing-smoke-38-tablet-coming-to-the-us
“London-based Datawind it will begin selling its $38 UbiSlate tablet computer in the U.S. early next year. ‘The $38 7-inch touchscreen UbiSlate 7Ci tablet runs on Google’s Android 4.0 and features a 1-gigahertz, single-core processor.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Where is the i686 in rhel 7
http://www.karan.org/blog/2013/12/15/where-is-the-i686-in-rhel-7/
RHEL 7 seems to have dropped installer / native support for 32bit Intel x86 machines. Only 64bit machines will be supported, and there is 32bit multilib support built in, so people can still run most 32bit apps.
Its worth noting that we might need to build a i686 tree in order to build the multilib components in x86_64 anyway.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP gives CEO a $1.5m pay rise amid worldwide layoffs
Let them eat cake
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2319871/hp-gives-ceo-a-usd15m-pay-rise-amid-worldwide-layoffs
SELLER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP’s CEO Meg Whitman has been given a pay rise of $1.5m, despite ongoing job cuts and protests at the firm, as the giant enterprise IT company starts to show signs of recovery under her leadership.
A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) noted that Whitman will draw a £1.5m salary for the year, on top of her stock options, having previously earned a symbolic $1 per year salary.
Tomi Engdahl says:
T bods: Windows XP, we WON’T leave you. Migrate? Chuh! As if…
Die-hard XP admins just won’t let go, reveals survey
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/xp_survey/
It’s not going to be easy to pry open the death grip of IT bods on the last copies of Windows XP, according to Spiceworks, whose survey had a whopping 33 per cent of tech professionals planning to keep the OS on at least one device after its end of life.
The social business network for IT pros, much beloved of sysadmins, quizzed over 1,300 of its users on how they were going to get over XP and found that 76 per cent of them were still running the operating system on some devices today and 36 per cent would be keeping at least one copy around.
Any movement so far in migration has been to Windows 7 rather than 8 or 8.1, with 96 per cent of those surveyed running a copy of the 7 OS on their network somewhere, compared to 42 per cent using Windows 8 or 8.1 somewhere and 30 per cent using Apple’s OS X.
Half of the tech bods that still have XP running on company desktops or laptops will be upgrading at least some of their devices to Windows 7, but only seven per cent are planning a switch to Windows 8 or 8.1.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top Products in Two Decades of Tech Reviews
http://allthingsd.com/20131217/top-products-in-two-decades-of-tech-reviews/
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Approximate Computing’ Saves Energy
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/12/18/2027239/approximate-computing-saves-energy
“According to a news release from Purdue University, ‘Researchers are developing computers capable of “approximate computing” to perform calculations good enough for certain tasks that don’t require perfect accuracy, potentially doubling efficiency and reducing energy consumption.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Approximate computing’ improves efficiency, saves energy
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q4/approximate-computing-improves-efficiency,-saves-energy.html
Researchers are developing computers capable of “approximate computing” to perform calculations good enough for certain tasks that don’t require perfect accuracy, potentially doubling efficiency and reducing energy consumption.
“The need for approximate computing is driven by two factors: a fundamental shift in the nature of computing workloads, and the need for new sources of efficiency,” said Anand Raghunathan, a Purdue Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who has been working in the field for about five years. “Computers were first designed to be precise calculators that solved problems where they were expected to produce an exact numerical value. However, the demand for computing today is driven by very different applications. Mobile and embedded devices need to process richer media, and are getting smarter – understanding us, being more context-aware and having more natural user interfaces. On the other hand, there is an explosion in digital data searched, interpreted, and mined by data centers.”
A growing number of applications are designed to tolerate “noisy” real-world inputs and use statistical or probabilistic types of computations.
“The nature of these computations is different from the traditional computations where you need a precise answer,” said Srimat Chakradhar, department head for Computing Systems Architecture at NEC Laboratories America, who collaborated with the Purdue team. “Here, you are looking for the best match since there is no golden answer, or you are trying to provide results that are of acceptable quality, but you are not trying to be perfect.”
“You are able to program for quality, and that’s the real hallmark of this work,” lead author Venkataramani said. “The hardware can use the quality fields and perform energy efficient computing, and what we have seen is that we can easily double energy efficiency.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Supercomputers Find Bacterial ‘Off’ Switch
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/supercomputers-find-bacterial-off-switch/
The comparatively recent addition of supercomputing to the toolbox of biomedical research may already have paid off in a big way: Researchers have used a bio-specialized supercomputer to identify a molecular “switch” that might be used to turn off bad behavior by pathogens. They’re now trying to figure out what to do with that discovery by running even bigger tests on the world’s second-most-powerful supercomputer.
The “switch” is a pair of amino acids called Phe396 that helps control the ability of the E. coli bacteria to move under its own power.
“But signaling is a dynamic process, which is difficult to fully understand using only snapshots.”
The 140,000 atoms at the tip of the chemoreceptor are only the tip of the iceberg, however.
Titan is a Cray, Inc. XK7 supercomputer installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratories with a peak performance of 20 petaflops, or 20,000 trillion calculations per second. Until it was edged out in June – by Tianhe-2, a Chinese behemoth with 16,000 nodes, 3,120,000 computing cores and a top sustained speed of 33.86-petaflops – Titan was the fastest supercomputer in the world.
“With Titan we will begin to see how the signal propagates across chemoreceptors,