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:
Comparing G++ and Intel Compilers and Vectorized Code
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/12/19/1540219/comparing-g-and-intel-compilers-and-vectorized-code
“A compiler can take your C++ loops and create vectorized assembly code for you. It’s obviously important that you RTFM and fully understand compiler options (especially since the defaults may not be what you want or think you’re getting), but even then, do you trust that the compiler is generating the best code for you?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comparing C++ Compilers’ Parallel-Programming Performance
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/comparing-c-compilers-parallel-programming-performance/
Intel and g++ compilers give you plenty of options for generating vectorized code. But how well does each platform actually perform?
Many of today’s C++ compilers can be used for parallel programming. There are two main ways to program in parallel:
Multicore programming
Vectorized programming
Multicore programming is just what it sounds like: Your code can run simultaneously on multiple cores. There are different ways to make this happen, whereby you specify directives or use extensions to the language so that a loop can, for example, run its iterations simultaneously on as many cores as it can obtain from the processor.
Vectorized programming takes place on a single core. The processor core has multiple registers that are storage areas built inside the processor. You can store numbers inside the registers and perform mathematical operations in them.
Conclusions
In general, both compilers give you plenty of options for generating vectorized code. Sometimes you have to do a little work, though, to get the compiler to actually vectorize your code. But it was clear that the Intel compiler was more willing to vectorize the code. The g++ compiler resisted at times, requiring different command-line options and occasionally reworking the code a bit; this is actually no surprise, since one might argue that Intel is staying a step ahead with their compilers, since they can actually be building the compilers for the processors before the processors are even released. The g++ team, however, can only work with what’s available to them. (That and they don’t have huge amounts of dollars to dump into it like Intel does.)
Either way, the g++ compiler did well up against the Intel compiler. I was troubled by how different the generated assembly code was between the 4.7 and 4.8.1 compilers—not just with the vectorization but throughout the code. But that’s another comparison for another day.
Tomi says:
ARM server maker Calxeda bites the dust
Heavy hangs the crown, says plucky startup as it begins restructuring process
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/19/calxeda_shutdown/
ARM server startup Calxeda has shut down in a shock move that deals a blow to dreams of data centers ruled by the low-power processors.
The plucky company, founded in 2008, had taken in $90m in funding during its lifetime, and carried the torch for taking low-power ARM-compatible chips into servers. But within the past 30 minutes, news broke that it was “restructuring” with an intellectual property fire sale looking likely.
It was due to bring out a range of 64-bit ARM processors next year, and reported good success with its 32-bit ECX chips, including a presence in shipped Hewlett-Packard kit.
“Carrying the load of industry pioneer has exceeded our ability to continue to operate as we had envisioned. We wanted to let you know that Calxeda has begun a restructuring process.”
The abrupt shutdown took many in the industry by surprise, including El Reg.
Though there are a variety of other ARM server pushers on the market, the shutdown is likely to cause shock in the tightly-knit ARM industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Calxeda, Chipmaker That Sought to Bring ARM Chips to Servers, Has Shut Down
http://allthingsd.com/20131219/calxeda-chipmaker-who-sought-to-bring-arm-to-servers-has-shut-down/
Depending on whom you ask, the coming year is supposed to be the one during which server chips based on the ARM architecture that is now so popular in smartphones and tablets start appearing in servers.
If that in fact turns out to be true, it will be with one less player in the market. Sources tell AllThingsD that Calxeda, the Austin-based chip design startup that had raised somewhere north of $90 million in venture capital funding, has effectively ceased operations today.
Tomi Engdahl says:
World’s cheapest tablet just got CHEAPER
India’s subsidised Aakash 4 will cost just £14/$US23
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/20/aakash4_datawind_india_cheapest_tablet/
The world’s cheapest tablet is about to get even cheaper after Indian telecoms minister Kapil Singh announced the subsidised Aakash 4 will eventually ship for just Rs.1,500 (£14).
The Aakash project was originally conceived by New Delhi in 2011 as a way to get computing devices in the hands of millions of students across the sub-continent.
Click here
However, it has been plagued by a series of delays – many of which were laid squarely at the door of UK company Datawind, which was responsible for delivering the devices.
Datawind has apparently lost the exclusive contract for the devices, which will now be manufactured by “several players”.
Singh is quoted as saying 18 manufacturers have tendered for the lucrative contract, although formal bids open on Friday.
The 7-incher will initially cost Rs.2,500 (£24.60) although that price will eventually drop to Rs.1,500, according to Singh.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free Software Foundation Endorses Its First Laptop
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0Nzg
The Free Software Foundation today has come out for “the first time we’ve ever been able to encourage people to buy and use a laptop as-is.” The Free Software Foundation now backs one laptop model as respecting the customer’s freedoms, but are the hardware specs any good?
The Free Software Foundation publicly announced today the “Respects Your Freedom” certification for the Gluglug X60 laptops, which come down to refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X60s… These refurbished laptops come from an Internet retailer in the UK that replaces the proprietary ThinkPad BIOS with Coreboot. The free software operating system preloaded on the refurbished X60 is Trisquel GNU/Linux, the Ubuntu derivative backed by the FSF that ships without any proprietary software or firmware options.
The press release says, “This is the first laptop the FSF has been able to endorse and encourage people to purchase, because it this is the first laptop sold with a completely free boot system and OS pre-installed…In addition to the FSF’s endorsement of this laptop, by awarding use of the Respects Your Freedom certification mark on this product”
The refurbished ThinkPad X60s from Gluglug start out with 1GB of RAM and a 60GB HDD but can be upgraded to 3GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD at its max.
So if you’re very serious about having a system that’s truly all free software down to the BIOS, the Free Software Foundation now endorses these refurbished ThinkPad X60s… Just be forewarned that the hardware is refurbished, years-old, and really nothing to get excited about. Pricing on these slow systems start out at 200£ (circa $328+ USD). If you want something that will work with modern Linux distributions but isn’t open-source down to the firmware but delivers much better performance and specs than a nearly eight year old laptop, there’s systems out ther
Tomi Engdahl says:
Airtame wants to mirror (almost) any screen to any other screen
Crowdfunded project also promises to open its code for tinkerers to play.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/12/airtame-wants-to-mirror-almost-any-screen-to-any-other-screen/
The product from the six-person Danish team takes the form of an HDMI dongle that plugs into any HDMI-capable display, and it’s combined with an application that you install on your computer. The HDMI dongle makes itself available on your LAN via Wi-Fi, and the Airtame app automatically picks up the dongle and lets you either mirror or extend your computer’s display onto the Airtame-attached screen. The fun isn’t limited to HDMI-equipped displays, either—the app also lets users mirror or extend one computer’s display and audio onto another’s without requiring any hardware at all.
Additionally, the Airtame application can create a “public stream,” where one computer’s screen (and audio) can be viewed from multiple computers running the Airtame app. The public streaming works via multicast on a LAN, and it can also unicast to remote displays on different network segments—or, potentially, over the Internet.
The main differentiating factor between Airtame and other screen mirroring solutions already available is that it works with (and in between) Windows, OS X, and Linux. The application will be available on all three operating systems so any one can push content to the dongle; additionally, any computer with the Airtame app installed can send or receive from any other computer running it, regardless of host operating system.
Airtame uses to accomplish this is more sophisticated than existing platform-agnostic remote-view products like VNC. Instead of sending sections or slices of framebuffer, Airtame transmits an h.264 video stream of the host system’s screen. Unlike other streaming solutions like Miracast, though, Airtame eschews Wi-Fi Direct and instead sticks with standard Wi-Fi, allowing it to function as a standard network host—and do a few other tricks, as well.
The Airtame dongle itself is running a modified version of Raspbian, a customized Linux distro based on Debian.
The big “but”
There’s one big problem, though: Airtame does all kinds of mirroring to and from the desktop, but it doesn’t support mirroring from or to smartphones or tablets.
“We see huge demand for that—it has been one of the biggest demands from the campaign,” said Airtame CEO Jonas Gyalokay. “But we are constrained by the manufacturers to actually allow the screencast of smart devices to our dongle.”
“You need system permissions,” elaborated Sukosd. “You can’t do it from a normal app.” Rather than deliver browser tab sharing like the Chromecast, the Airtame crew wants to be able to offer full screen sharing of a mobile device, and at least for now, this isn’t possible. Sukosd went on to explain that this is because Airtame would need access to the device’s framebuffer in order to compress and stream its contents, and that’s not possible—at least, not without action on the user’s part.
“Technically it’s possible with jailbreaking or rooting, but obviously, we can’t support that,” he said.
Mirroring an Airtame-equipped PC onto an iOS or Android device would be possible through the use of an app, but at this stage in development Airtame is focusing purely on desktop and laptop screen sharing.
The Airtame application and the HDMI dongle’s firmware image will both be open sourced (likely under the GPL or a GPL-like license, though that hasn’t yet been decided) as the product enters its beta test stage. Right now, that’s slated to begin around late February or March of 2014. “We’re actually going to open source both of them and the protocol specification,” explained Sukosd.
“We will actually add a dual license on the software,” Gyalokay continued. “For personal use, you can take the software and you can hack around on it and stuff, but if you want to use it in commercial ways you have to license the software from us.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320436&
The increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline, and drawn battle lines between Intel on the one side and ARM, AMD, and a half-dozen other companies on the other.
“We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market, which is the unsung workhorse of the internet,” said Rob Lineback, senior market research analyst at IC Insights. “Their role is increasing as far as importance as a result of cloud computing.”
According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. New microservers are being targeted at a wider range of datacenter applications and cloud-computing platforms. Intel is currently in a struggle with a number of processor suppliers looking to develop new 64-bit server MPUs with cores designed by ARM.
“Intel, as far as microprocessor supplier for servers, has been the market leader for x86 processors in the server market, with just over 85% of the market,”
Following two consecutive years of 2% annual sales declines, the total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion, according to the report. Over the course of the five-period between 2012 and 2017, the server IC market is expected to see an increase of about 1% to $15 billion in the final year of the projection. The report further states that the multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers — and both are featured in a growing number of servers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why few want to be the CIO anymore
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244743/Why_few_want_to_be_the_CIO_anymore
More than half of the respondents to our survey say they don’t aspire to be a CIO. Here’s why politics, pay and a lack of prestige can sink CIO aspirations.
Being a CIO doesn’t offer the opportunity to do the cool stuff that IT people like so much to do. It’s about meetings and budgets and politics,” says Jurenka, who works at Westway Group, a bulk liquid storage company in New Orleans.
“The IT management positions I pursue are almost all hands-on positions,” Allen says. “Yes, you have to take advantage of the opportunities given to you, but I continue to work on my [technical] certifications because I want to be in an engineering position. The CIO role doesn’t appeal to me. I discovered over the years that I prefer to be hands-on.”
Jurenka and Allen aren’t alone. In a Computerworld survey of 489 IT professionals conducted in August and September, 55% of the respondents said they don’t aspire to a CIO post. In fact, only 32% of them said that they have set their caps for IT’s top job. Politics, relatively low pay and a lack of prestige all register as deterrents.
Yet there’s another reason for this shift in career thinking. Technology professionals are being recruited to work in marketing, logistics and other functions outside of IT as technology becomes more deeply embedded in virtually every aspect of the business. That trend is expanding the IT career path horizontally. Rather than one career ladder with CIO at the top rung, there are increasingly multiple career bridges across organizations.
“The digital business wave is bound to reignite interest in information and technology and to lure people into different areas of the business as information and technology increase their direct impact on revenue, markets and customers,”
“If people are going to work hard toward getting a C-level title, they want it to mean something,” he says. “What a lot of people see is that CIOs don’t wield either the power or authority commensurate to a C-level title.”
Another big disincentive: “The politics are endless and there’s not a lot of respect for the position,” Barron says. “The C-suite is pretty apathetic about the CIO position. What they want is for systems to work and they want no drama out of IT.”
The politics and power struggles don’t go unnoticed by the rank and file. Additionally, IT staffers say they can’t help but notice how much time the CIO role requires. Many IT professionals, especially younger people, are unwilling to trade off having balanced work and home lives for the pursuit of IT’s top spot.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia launches Grid virtual GPU with Citrix for graphics-intensive remote working
Allows designers and software engineers to work from anywhere on portable devices
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2320101/nvidia-launches-grid-virtual-gpu-with-citrix-for-graphics-intensive-remote-working
CHIP MAKER Nvidia has launched a virtual GPU (vGPU) technology, Nvidia Grid with Citrix XenDesktop 7.1 and Citrix XenServer 6.2 virtualisation software to allow designers and engineers who use graphically intensive applications to work remotely.
The technology lets employees use any computing device, including their own notebooks and portable devices, to access all their office productivity and design applications virtually – just as they would at their desks – from anywhere at any time.
Nvidia claims the software will liberate those who are limited in where they can work due to the relatively large computers needed to do their jobs.
“Businesses have increasingly relied on desktop virtualisation technologies to provide employees with anytime access to computing resources. However, until Grid, virtual apps and desktops had to rely on CPU-based graphics to scale on servers,” Nvidia said, highlighting that constraints in performance and compatibility have made it difficult to virtualise video and photo-editing applications, for example.
“Prior to Grid vGPU on Citrix XenDesktop, customers could deploy Grid to virtualise GPU access to end users on a one-to-one basis. Now, they can quickly share access on one GPU to many end users, and easily reallocate access depending on changing project needs,” Nvidia added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Server Buying Decisions: Memory
by Johan De Gelas on December 19, 2013 10:00 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7479/server-buying-decisions-memory
But the biggest change is that the pricing difference between LRDIMMs and RDIMMs has shrunk a lot. Just a year ago, a 32GB LRDIMM cost $2000 and more, while a more “sensible” 16GB RDIMM costs around $300-$400. You paid about three times more per GB to get the highest capacity DIMMs in your servers.
The price per GB of LRDIMMs is only 60% higher than that of the best RDIMMs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why we put up with imperfection
Column This Christmas, I’m taking on our faith in technology
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2319713/why-we-put-up-with-imperfection
I’m going to have a good old moan. I have this affliction. No, not the one you’re thinking of. This one is about my relationship with technology. I wonder if you have it too?
You see, I bloody loves me a gadget. I love the idea of a piece of technology that can make my life just that little bit more amazing. But then, the reality is that nine times out of 10, it just doesn’t.
This is particularly true of anything involving one gadget having to talk to another one. Take printers – we all know that most of the time, they will point-blank refuse to talk to anything on the network.
And don’t get me started on DLNA. I’ve had my music collection digitised for three years. I haven’t touched my CDs in all that time. And what has actually happened is that I’ve just stopped listening to music, because every time I try to play the album I want off my NAS drive, I can guarantee that it will fail, miserably. “Can’t find selected drive” has become the slogan of my dinner parties.
Me and Mrs Chris might sit down and watch a movie, and we just know that within 15 minutes it will suddenly stutter and grind to a halt just
I guess what I’m saying is, whatever the innovation, whether it’s NFC or DAB or SGS4 or anything else, it’s never perfect. They’re all guaranteed to go wrong or fall short sooner or later – and usually right when you need them.
But we persist. And we keep persisting, because we want to believe. Incrementally these things do get better and more reliable, until one day, it becomes commonplace and we forget it was ever an issue. And that’s almost where it stops seeming like technology at all.
don’t try to pretend that you don’t have faith. You’ve got faith in technology – a faith that this is the gadget that will change your life.
Why else would we spend the moments after a first boot sequence silently praying, “Please work, please work”?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Web Surfing Improves Motor Skills
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/20/1451240/web-surfing-improves-motor-skills
“Don’t worry about watching all those cat videos on the Internet. You’re not wasting time when you are at your computer — you’re honing your fine-motor skills.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC: 40 Percent of Developers Are ‘Hobbyists’
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/12/20/1420258/idc-40-percent-of-developers-are-hobbyists
“A new IDC study has found that ‘of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million — roughly 40 percent — are so-called hobbyist developers,’ which by IDC’s definition is ‘someone who spends 10 hours a month or more writing computer or mobile device programs, even though they are not paid primarily to be a programmer.’”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC: Hobbyist programmers on the rise
http://www.itworld.com/career/396193/idc-hobbyist-programmers-rise
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape, a new IDC study has found
Of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million — roughly 40 percent — are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation.
“While hobbyist developer populations were not forecast previously at IDC, it is expected that this population has seen a much faster rate of increase over recent years than the population of professional software developers and will likely grow at a faster rate in the future,” stated the report, compiled by IDC’s program director for software development research, Al Hilwa.
The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates, who have been championing the idea that more of the general population should learn to code, in order to better understand the ways of the computers they rely on so heavily.
A hobbyist developer is, by IDC’s definition, someone who spends 10 hours a month or more writing computer or mobile device programs, even though they are not paid primarily to be a programmer. They may program for any one of number of reasons.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2014 Worldwide Software Developer and ICT-Skilled Worker Estimates
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=244709
“IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers,” said Al Hilwa, research director, Application Development Software at IDC. “IDC also estimates there are 7.5 million hobbyist developers, which brings the total software developer count to 18.5 million. This country-by-country analysis of 90 of the most developed countries in the world, which represent 97% of the world’s GDP, is unique in the industry as it provides the only bottom-up model of the world’s developer and ICT-skilled workers.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: Do You Run a Copy-Cat Installation At Home?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/12/20/1813204/ask-slashdot-do-you-run-a-copy-cat-installation-at-home
“During a discussion with my wife last night, I came to the realization that the primary reason I have a Hadoop cluster tucked under my desk at home (I work in an office) is because my drive for learning is too aggressive for my IT department’s security policy, as well as their hardware budget. But on closer inspection the issue runs even deeper than that. Time spent working on the somewhat menial tasks of the day job prevent me from spending time learning new tech that could help me do the job better. So I do my learning on my own time.”
analysis 2tb Seagate Desktop Expansion says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla: Native code? No, it’s JavaScript, only it’s BLAZING FAST
New tech promises browser apps at near native speed
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/20/native_code_no_its_javascript_only_its_blazing_fast/
The Mozilla Foundation says it has reached an important milestone in the quest to improve JavaScript performance, with some JavaScript benchmarks now running only around 1.5 times slower than when the equivalent algorithms are compiled and executed as native binary code.
“That’s a big improvement from earlier this year, when as mentioned before things were closer to 2x slower than native,” Mozilla researcher Alon Zakai said in a blog post on Friday.
There is a catch, however. Strictly speaking, the benchmarks Mozilla has tested were implemented not in hand-coded JavaScript, but in Asm.js.
Asm.js is JavaScript. It will run in any browser. But it’s only a subset of the full JavaScript language. It intentionally ignores some of the more ambiguous features of JavaScript syntax, leaving a dialect that is more streamlined and – most importantly – easier for runtime engines to optimize for performance.
The idea is that while traditional JavaScript is a syntactically rich, high-level language like C or Python, JavaScript written to the Asm.js spec is closer to assembly language. In fact, much like assembly language, the structure and syntax of Asm.js code is so arcane that application developers are advised not to try to write it by hand. Instead, Asm.js is designed to be output by compilers.
One such compiler is Emscripten, which Zakai and others have developed at Mozilla. Emscripten allows C/C++ source code to be compiled into JavaScript, including Asm.js. It’s the tool that makes possible such impressive demos as the in-browser 3D first-person shooter game that Mozilla unveiled last year.
But producing code in Asm.js is only half of the solution. To get the biggest performance gains, explicit support for Asm.js needs to be implemented in JavaScript execution engines.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubuntu desktop is so 2013… All hail 2014 Ubuntu mobile
Does this mean Linux gets a real chance on mobile?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/25/ubuntu_year_review/
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is no stranger to exploring rarefied territory. The man has, after all, been to space.
His interest in new frontiers means Ubuntu, the Linux distro he created, is also poised to make a great leap – to go where no Linux has gone before.
Shuttleworth’s plan to take Linux beyond the desktop and into the world of consumer devices may be his most daring and, if it works, lasting idea.
There’s a lot of heat and debris flying at the moment. Casualties have thus far included a bit of privacy (fixable, but still unsettling) and a general neglect of what was once the focus – the Ubuntu desktop.
Sometimes it shows: that controversial search feature wasn’t exactly great at finding what you wanted.
Also, the Mir windowing system that was supposed to bring more touch to the desktop got yanked weeks before its supposed release, because of outstanding technical problems.
Just 12 months ago, Ubuntu was yet another Linux desktop. In that sense, looking back at 2013, it would be perfectly reasonable to say it was a very boring year for Ubuntu. So long as you confine the meaning of “Ubuntu” to “actual shipping, desktop operating system” then it was a largely unremarkable year. The roadmap for 2014 looks similarly dull on the desktop. There’s a new display server coming, a change that most users will never notice.
It’s all about the Touch
What has made and will continue to make Ubuntu the distro to watch in 2014 is not desktop Ubuntu: it is Ubuntu Touch.
What made 2013 a really exciting year for Ubuntu fans was the revelation that Canonical was going to put a real Linux distro on a phone. You could argue that Android is Linux – peel back the virtual machine layers and technically Android runs atop a Linux kernel – but Android pales next to the full power of Linux on your phone.
When Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu Touch, he didn’t just move Canonical into a new market, he reignited the nerd fantasy of real Linux-based phones, which taps a market well beyond Ubuntu’s usual share of the Linux desktop.
To paraphrase an old Apple ad, an Ubuntu Touch offers your desktop in your pocket. Thanks to that Mir display server that no one will notice you literally have a desktop in your pocket; all you have to do is plug your phone into a larger monitor and Ubuntu Touch will reveal a desktop size interface. The “desktop” version of Ubuntu in 2018 will be your Ubuntu Touch device docked to an 8K ultra-HD monitor. Who doesn’t want that?
But more even than the convenience of your desktop in your pocket, Ubuntu Touch gives Linux a chance that it has never had before.
At the same time, if Ubuntu Touch can realise its ambitions, it has a chance to change the face of mobile computing for good. Either way, it’s safe to assume 2014 is going to be a wild ride for Ubuntu fans.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PC Plus Packs Windows and Android Into Same Machine
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/0154256/pc-plus-packs-windows-and-android-into-same-machine
“At the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January, it is expected that multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and Android, two different analysts said recently. The new devices will introduce a new marketing buzzword called PC Plus, explained Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies. ‘A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well’,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Over 40 million Samsung tablets sold this year, report says
http://www.androidauthority.com/40-million-samsung-tablets-2013-328050/
A new report from South Korea says that Samsung has managed to sell over 40 million tablets this year, an impressive number for the company.
Samsung apparently saw increased growth in the last quarter of the year, thanks to the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 (2014 Edition) that hit stores in many markets during the period, but also thanks to the many holiday promotions that included a cheaper or free Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 tablet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Android, Chromebooks storm channel as Windows PC sales go flat
Google gave Microsoft a drubbing in 2013 – analyst
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/12/24/npd_2013_channel_sales/
Despite all the carping about the slumping PC market, it really wasn’t such a bad year for channel computing sales, with devices based on Google technologies pulling ahead as the clear winners.
According to the latest numbers from market analysis firm NPD, overall sales of desktops, notebooks, and tablets through the channel in 2013 were up 25.4 per cent over the previous year. Notebook sales were up 28.9 per cent, and even the much-dismissed desktop category saw channel sales increase 8.5 per cent.
More Reading
Android tablets to outsell laptops by 2017: IDCPC market: ABANDON HOPE all ye who enter hereChromebooks now the fastest-growing segment of PC marketSamsung quits desktop PC biz, will stick to all-in-ones and portablesGoogle Chromebooks now in over 6,600 stores
What was different about 2013, however, was the degree to which Microsoft’s domination of the computing market gave way to other platforms. While sales of Windows desktops were up nearly 10 per cent since 2012 – a modest increase – sales of Windows notebooks were flat.
Meanwhile, devices based on Google’s Android and Chrome OS platforms were charging through the channel like racehorses. Chromebooks and Android tablets together accounted for 1.76 million channel sales in 2013, a 340 per cent increase from the previous year.
Chromebooks, with their attractive low prices, were all but invisible in 2012, yet they accounted for 21 per cent of all notebook sales this year and 8 per cent of all computer and tablet sales combined.
Tomi Engdahl says:
My Opinion on Cloud Computing: It Takes You Back to the Future
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=270591&cid=nl.dn14
The very early days of computers consisted of big mainframes in some back room somewhere with terminals connected to that mainframe. That era was ushered out by the PC/workstation revolution. When PCs became really popular, everyone wanted one on their desktops. That allowed them to run applications locally, rather than on the server/mainframe. Employees were equipped with just the applications that were required for their jobs, and files could be maintained locally on the host computer (away from peering eyes).
Little by little, the PC nibbled away at the low end of the workstation market,
Somewhere along the way, roughly around the early 1990s, a box was developed called an X Terminal.
the masses
felt that the X Terminals were a step backward.
Fast forward to today, and there’s a trend that is gaining so much momentum it’s not likely to be held back — enter cloud computing. Proponents of cloud computing will tell you that the technology offers the best of both worlds: it provides the storage and ability to share files, yet lets users keep the PCs that they are loathe to give up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers Claim Facebook Is ‘Dead and Buried’ To Many Young Users
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/29/0416259/researchers-claim-facebook-is-dead-and-buried-to-many-young-users
“The recent decline in Facebook’s popularity with teenagers appears to be worsening. A Global Social Media Impact study of 16 to 18 year olds found that many considered the site ‘uncool’ and keep their profiles alive only to keep in touch with older relatives’”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Young users see Facebook as ‘dead and buried’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10539274/Young-users-see-Facebook-as-dead-and-buried.html
A study of how teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried”, but that the network is morphing into a tool for keeping in touch with older family members
Tomi Engdahl says:
GNU Hurd Is Up To 344k Lines Of Code
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU1NTM
While GNU Hurd has been around for years prior to the existence of the Linux kernel, Hurd is now up to only 344 thousand lines of code, but it’s having a hard time getting much higher.
Tomi Engdahl says:
KDBUS & Systemd Now Yields A Working System
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU1NDM
Open-source developers this week achieved a pleasant late Christmas present for Fedora users of having a working system with using the in-development Linux kernel DBus implementation (KDBUS) paired with the latest systemd code can now yield a booting system.
Lennart Poettering wrote on the systemd mailing list, “We reached a major milestone in kdbus development today. We have all the userspace and compat stuff ready to make a full Fedora system boot cleanly and work fine with kdbus on the backend. With current git kdbus and current git systemd things should just work.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
GNU Octave 3.8 Has A GUI, Uses OpenGL
Posted by Michael Larabel in Free Software on 28 December 2013 04:07 AM EST
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU1NDg
GNU Octave, the open-source high-level language for dealing with numerical computations and largely compatible with MATLAB, has a graphical user-interface with its new 3.8 release
GNU Octave 3.8 hasn’t been officially announced at the time of publishing, but the source package was uploaded just a short time ago to the project’s GNU.org FTP server.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The year when Google made TAPE cool again…
Hey, back up a minute (geddit?)… it’s actually cost-effective
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/29/a_year_of_tape_tittle_tattle/
Tape has pretty much been rescued over the past year by revelations that both Google and Amazon were using tape libraries for data archiving purposes.If these glamorous, bleeding edge online cloud service provider firms used boring old legacy tape then, hey, the stuff must still really be useful.
It was a mixed picture though. Tape for archive use strengthened while tape use for backup declined some more.
Later in the year, the Santa Clara Consulting Group revealed that the decline in tape media sales had slowed significantly. SpectraLogic announced its Black Pearl technology to have object data stored on tape, the first major access protocol advance for tape in years. Up until this point, object storage, with its disk media bias, had been seen as another attack on tape.
Storage companies continued introducing disk-based products for backup, attacking the remnants of the small business tape backup market. Struggling tape system vendors like Quantum and Overland Storage carried on struggling as their tape-based revenues carried on shrinking.
Overall the tape backup market is still in decline, with active vendors pursuing defensive strategies. Struggling tape system vendors Overland Storage and Tandberg Data, both pushing forwards in disk-based product sales, are merging in an attempt to gain critical and stable business mass for profitable revenues.
Oracle launched its higher-capacity T10000D format and IBM is pushing tape drive and media capacity forwards, heading past a 100TB capacity tape.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP clampdown on ‘unauthorised’ server fixing to start in January
‘Budget-conscious’ IT types, no more cheap deals for you…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/23/hewlett_packard_support_clampdown/
Hewlett-Packard will start restricting who is allowed to fix its ProLiant servers starting in the new year.
HP is changing the way it delivers firmware updates for ProLiant systems from January, The Reg had learned, so only HP or HP-authorised partners are allowed to receive and install the patches.
According to a leaked internal email seen by The Reg, HP will only release updates in return for an in-warranty product serial number or an active Service Agreement ID.
That restricts updates to customers or authorised partners, and is designed to cut out those providing discounted support services.
It means customers will need to be on a full-blown support contract as that’ll be the only way they’ll be able to received a service agreement ID in the first place.
The ProLiant policy begins in January 2014The ProLiant policy begins in January 2014
Tomi Engdahl says:
US Requirement For Software Dev Certification Raises Questions
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/2219243/us-requirement-for-software-dev-certification-raises-questions
“U.S. government contracts often require bidders to have achieved some level of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).”
“Given that the CMMI Institute is now a self-supporting firm”,
“‘Why is the government mandating that you support a for-profit company?’”
“To what extent does a CMMI certification determine a successful project outcome? CGI Federal, the lead contractor at Healthcare.gov, is a veritable black belt in software development. In 2012, it achieved the highest possible Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level for development certification, only the 10th company in the U.S. to do so.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The firm behind Healthcare.gov had top-notch credentials — and it didn’t help
The biggest software failure of 2013 and why CMMI certification was no predictor of success
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244923/The_firm_behind_Healthcare.gov_had_top_notch_credentials_and_it_didn_t_help
CGI Federal, the lead contractor at Healthcare.gov, is a veritable black belt in software development. In 2012, it achieved the highest possible Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level for development certification, only the 10th company in the U.S. to do so.
CMMI offers process models to help an organization keep developments on track, ensure resources are in place, meet requirements, are measured, stay on budget and deliver value. But it does not offer technical approaches, such as how to conduct a test.
CMMI certifications frequently turn up as a requirement in government software development contracts. In fact, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversaw the healthcare.gov project, says CMMI provides “the essential elements of an effective process.”
If a project that’s based on CMMI runs into problems, process defenders will usually cite issues with management and decision-making. (That was certainly the case with Healthcare.gov.) But that’s a default defense of CMMI generally. When a project fails, questions about CMMI may never come up. But when a project succeeds, CMMI may get the credit.
What good is CMMI?
So is CMMI of value? The private sector has clearly mixed views.
“Everybody they (the government) go to will have a process — nobody can function without one,” said Basgall. “CMMI isn’t actually measuring how good the process is, it’s measuring whether it’s defined, and if it’s managed, and optimizing,” he said.
CMMI arose some 25 years ago via the backing of the Department of Defense and the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Given that the CMMI Institute is now a self-supporting firm, any requirement that companies be certified by it — and spend the money needed to do so — raises a natural question.
The scenario described by Friedman shows how CMMI certification requirements could limit bidders for government contracts
The case for CMMI
CMMI supporters, however, say it would not have survived if it did not add value.
“You can learn through trial and error, which is how most folks do it,” said Botula, of software development, “or you can benefit from best practice, from proven approaches and use it as a roadmap to align your business goals to your operational capability. (CMMI) is a consistent way of doing that.”
And as far as trial-and-error goes, Johnson points to the work needed to create the first light bulb and Apple’s iPod.
“Sometimes trial and error is good,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Releases 5,000 Pages of Open-Source Haswell Documentation
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/1550239/intel-releases-5000-pages-of-open-source-haswell-documentation
“The new documentation complements their longstanding open-source Linux graphics driver”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Algorithms Reduce the Carbon Cost of Cloud Computing
Software redistributes tasks among networked data centers to optimize energy efficiency
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/new-algorithms-reduce-the-carbon-cost-of-cloud-computing
The computing cloud may feel intangible to users, but it has a definite physical form and a corresponding carbon footprint. Facebook’s data centers, for example, were responsible for the emission of 298 000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2012, the equivalent of roughly 55 000 cars on the road. Computer scientists at Trinity College Dublin and IBM Research Dublin have shown that there are ways to reduce emissions from cloud computing, although their plan would likely cause some speed reductions and cost increases. By developing a group of algorithms, collectively called Stratus, the team was able to model a worldwide network of connected data centers and predict how best to use them to keep carbon emissions low while still getting the needed computing done and data delivered.
“The overall goal of the work was to see load coming from different parts of the globe [and] spread it out to different data centers to achieve objectives like minimizing carbon emissions or having the lowest electricity costs,” says Donal O’Mahony, a computer science professor at Trinity.
For the simulation, the scientists modeled a scenario inspired by Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) data center setup that incorporated three key variables—carbon emissions, cost of electricity, and the time needed for computation and data transfer on a network.
The researchers then used the Stratus algorithms to optimize the workings of the network for any of the three variables. With the algorithms they were able to reduce the EC2 cloud’s emissions by 21 percent over a common commercial scheme for balancing computing loads.
even when Stratus was tuned to reduce carbon, it shaved 38 milliseconds off the average time taken to request and receive a response from the data centers.
The researchers stress that the results have more value in representing trends than in predicting real-world numbers for quantities like carbon savings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Biggest Tech Whiffs of 2013
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/the-biggest-tech-whiffs-of-2013/
From Healthcare.gov to BlackBerry 10, some high-profile tech initiatives really crashed and burned.
BlackBerry 10
Did BlackBerry executives really think that BlackBerry 10 would spark a miraculous turnaround, or were they simply going through the motions of promoting it?
Microsoft’s “Devices” Strategy
On paper, Microsoft’s decision to start manufacturing hardware in-house made perfect sense
In reality, however, that decision resulted in messiness: first, its inaugural device—the Surface tablet-PC-hybrid-thingie—failed to sell. Second, OEMs that had stood by Microsoft for years—including Hewlett-Packard—began to view their partner in Redmond as more of a competitor, which could eventually result in still more Chromebooks and Android devices hitting the market.
Snapchat
Snapchat is an app that allows people to send messages that vaporize within a few seconds of being opened. That’s attracted millions of users
Healthcare.gov
Originally launched with high hopes, the government’s online portal for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) quickly transformed into a tech disaster for the ages: amidst repeated crashes and glitches, customers found themselves unable to sign up for new accounts or enroll in health insurance.
Facebook Home
Does anyone still use Facebook’s misbegotten attempt at “skinning” the Android OS?
Tomi Engdahl says:
If UNIX Were a Religion
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/31/0328221/if-unix-were-a-religion
“Charles Stross has written a very clever article where he describes the religious metaphor he uses with non-technical folks to explain the relationship between Mac OS X and UNIX.”
Over-Extended Metaphor for the day
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/metaphor-for-the-day.html#more
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM and Qualcomm: 2013 chips roundup
The past year in all things silicon
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2320377/intel-amd-nvidia-arm-and-qualcomm-2013-chips-roundup
Tomi Engdahl says:
Introducing The INQUIRER Android experiment
One man’s New Year’s resolution to throw out Windows
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2319715/introducing-the-inquirer-android-experiment
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP: We’re axing 29,000 workers? Add another 5,000 to that
Happy New Year, everyone
By Chris Mellor, 31st December 2013
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/31/hp_firing_5000_more_heads/
HP will lay off 5,000 more workers than the 29,000 positions earmarked for redundancy in July.
The “continued market and business pressures” refers to HP’s inability to sell more of its products. Its latest quarterly financial results suggested the Meg-Whitman-led computer firm had turned the corner in its recovery efforts. But it has some way to go before it can grow revenues to bank profits greater than 4 per cent or so off sales.
It seems inevitable that some of the 5,000 positions to be eliminated will be in Europe. The company, which employs 330,000 worldwide
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are High MOOC Failure Rates a Bug Or a Feature?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/01/01/2155201/are-high-mooc-failure-rates-a-bug-or-a-feature
” NPR’s Eric Westervelt reports that 2013 might be dubbed the year that online education fell back to earth. Westervelt joins others in citing the higher failure rate of online students as evidence that MOOCs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. “
Tomi Engdahl says:
Halfway through Meg Whitman’s HP turnaround time: Is it working?
Certainly not in the bag yet, that’s for sure
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/27/hp_green_shoots_in_context/
Sounds as though if HP hasn’t exactly turned a corner, it can see the corner approaching. Or can it?
Whitman, a former eBay chief and one-time candidate for California governor, was named CEO in 2011 and pledged to turn HP around by 2016.
She came in as HP was losing billions.
Since then, Whitman has restructured – cutting 26,000 staff to balance the books – and stirred up management with her own appointments.
The company whose slogan used to be “invent” is doing less R&D and spending more on selling and marketing what it has already built. R&D spend fell 20 per cent to $729m during the year while sales and marketing increased four per cent to $3.35bn.
On software, HP is suffering just like other makers of big, on-premises software whose sales are seeing growth slow down. HP saw software revenue fall nine per cent compared to a year ago, to $3.9bn.
HP’s ambitions as a provider of cloud services, meanwhile, seem to be going nowhere. The HP Public Cloud service opened in September 2011, but two years on HP is not talking business, revenue or customers.
Mid-way through Whitman’s self-allotted turnaround timespan there are positive signs. More time will tell whether what we are seeing has solid foundations
Tomi Engdahl says:
Haswell micro: Intel’s Next Unit of Computing desktop PC
It’s a NUC-ing beauty…..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/02/review_intel_nuc_d54250wyk/
Never let it be said that Intel doesn’t respond to criticism. Its first Next Unit of Computing (NUC) micro-desktop, which appeared in the first few months of 2013, wasn’t a bad machine, but it prompted grumbles from reviewers (myself included), about some odd design and packaging decisions.
Taking the feedback on board, Intel has addressed almost all of them in its latest NUC, which maintains the broad 116 x 116 x 35mm form-factor – the new one is slightly shorter – but adds all the ports and connectivity absent from the first-generation machine. It also gains the chip giant’s power-lean Haswell processor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
GOG’s managing director: ‘Gamer resistance to DRM is stronger than ever’
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/31/gog-qa
Digital games distribution site GOG (Good Old Games) has spent the last five years offering classic videogame titles DRM-free to its customers. Earlier in 2013 the site launched an indie publishing which allowed independent developers to submit their games for sale through GOG — an alternative to Steam’s contentious Greenlight initiative.
Wired.co.uk spoke to Guillaume Rambourg, Managing Director of GOG.com, to discuss DRM, anti-sales and why exactly the site was offering the original Fallout games free of charge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Glassholes, snapt**ts, #blabbergasms, selfies and PRISM: The Reg’s review of 2013
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/31/end_of_year_review_2013/
C is for Cloutage: The cloud, technology firms told us, is more reliable then running our own servers. OK, but it’s still people in charge of servers, and people still make mistakes – just on somebody else’s servers, as this year’s massive cloud outages proved. Millions of business users and individuals worldwide were kicked offline for hours at Amazon (.com and AWS), Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.
D is for Defenestration: Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Blackberry’s Thorsten Heins, Acer’s JT Wang, and Intel’s Paul Otellini were pushed or jumped this year.
E is for Enigma: A year of will-it-won’t-it-quit-the-US-telecoms-market climaxed in December when Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei said that he was pulling out of the US. “If Huawei gets in the middle of US-China relations… it’s not worth it,”
G is for Glasshole: “A cop just stopped me and gave me a ticket for wearing Google Glass while driving!” incredulous Google eyewear fan Cecilia Abadie wrote on – what else – her Google+ page
J is for Judgment Day:
Google told the Machine Learning Conference in San Francisco last month that it has been using machine learning on some of its servers, stringing together large clusters to automatically classify data, such as pictures.
K is for Ker-ching: Bitcoin is a virtual payment system that lived on the fringes of the web until this year, when interest exploded. The virtual currency’s value peaked on one Bitcoin exchange with a single Bitcoin worth $1,209.94 in November – its value having increased 100-fold during the year.
O is for Outsourced: A rather clever dev sent his job overseas to a subcontractor in Shenyang, China, freeing up his days to surf the web, hit various social networks and watch cat videos on YouTube.
he thing that gave Bob away in the end was a security audit called in by bosses
P is for PRISM: Ever feel like you’re being watched? You should be, because you are if former WikiLeaks deep throat Edward Snowden is to be believed.
R is for Rightsizing: Apple has been seemingly unstoppable with the iPhone and then iPad earning billions and forcing others big and small to follow its lead. Since the passing of Steve Jobs, though, we’ve been waiting for the “next big thing.”
T is for Turnaround Men: Acer and Intel picked insiders for CEOs to take their companies by the scruff of their necks – president Jim Wong and COO Brian Krzanich
U is for U-turn: Microsoft released Windows 8.1, re-introducing the desktop and the Start button.
W is for Writedown: Microsoft wrote off nearly $1bn in stock on unsold versions of its ARM-based Windows tablet, Surface RT, in the fourth quarter.
Z is for Zero: Intel’s freshly minted CEO Brian Krzanich (see T is for Turn-around-men) was pushed on stage at his company’s first investor meeting in November to deliver the bad news to the money men: no growth in 2014.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8.x breaks 10 percent, Internet Explorer 11 makes a splash
Chrome for Android was 2013’s big winner.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/windows-8-x-breaks-10-percent-internet-explorer-11-makes-a-splash/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forget best, here are the 2013 gadgets Ars staff liked the most
Smart phones, smart pants, smart nanoparticles—man, what DIDN’T we review?!
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/12/ars-picks-our-favorite-gear-gadgets-reviews-from-2013/
wikispaces.com says:
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own blog and was curious what all is needed to get
setup? I’m assuming having a blog like yours
would cost a pretty penny? I’m not very internet savvy so I’m not 100% positive.
Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Kudos
Here is my web page; managed services provider; wikispaces.com,
Cristobal Brunswick says:
OSX 10.7.3 with qthid 3.1 : No FCD detected. Whas wrong?
Jacinda Strehlow says:
Regarding the CD101 a lot of people are using it for Sous Vide DIY waterbaths, and a better manual for the weird hidden settings has been found: