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 says:
The Chromebook Pixel, for what’s next
http://chrome.blogspot.fi/2013/02/the-chromebook-pixel-for-whats-next.html
Chromebooks were designed to make computing speedy, simple and secure. For many of you, they have become the perfect, additional (and yes, affordable) computer: ideal for catching up on emails, sharing documents and chatting via Hangouts. We’re tremendously grateful to our partners—Samsung, Acer, Lenovo and HP—for their commitment. The momentum has been remarkable: the Samsung Chromebook has been #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list for laptops every day since it launched 125 days ago in the U.S., and Chromebooks now represent more than 10 percent of notebook sales at Currys PC World, the largest electronics retailer in the U.K.
So what’s next? Today we’re excited to announce our newest laptop—the Chromebook Pixel
Let’s start with the screen. This Chromebook has the highest pixel density (239 pixels per inch) of any laptop screen on the market today. Packed with 4.3 million pixels, the display offers sharp text, vivid colors and extra-wide viewing angles.
It’s one of the most exciting times in the history of personal computing, thanks to a rapid pace of change, innovation and consumer adoption of devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP needs medicine – the same disease as Dell
IT company Hewlett-Packard at the beginning profit fell from a year earlier, but the company remained fairly profitable.
HP’s profit and sales have continued to decline in six quarters into the tube.
Also, HP’s rival, this week announced the results of Dell, has suffered from the declining sales.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/hp+kaipaa+laaketta++sama+tauti+kuin+dellilla/a881278?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-22022013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubuntu’s Shuttleworth embraces tablet terror: Our PC biz will survive, too
Linux man’s roadmap munches tab, phone, PC, TV
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/20/shuttleworth_no_pc_fear/
Ubuntu spaceman Mark Shuttleworth is embracing the full horror of tablets and smartphones, calculating they’ll do little harm to his Linux distro’s PC business.
Shuttleworth yesterday announced a fondleslab-friendly Ubuntu interface for tabs ahead of next week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC). The first tabs running the UI will be the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 – the Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview for the kit will be available from tomorrow, 21 February.
Next up – smartphones.
The focus then switches to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, slated for release next year. This will run exactly the same code and binaries for tablets, smartphones, TVs and PCs, with the machine’s screen re-orienting depending on how you dock or set up.
Ubuntu’s first success was a Linux distro on the PC, but it’s a matter of record that PC sales are tumbling – hurting the results of PC giants and forcing Dell to go private.
There’s no reliable stats on Ubuntu’s PC market share – Canonical last year had claimed on its website something like one in five PCs run Ubuntu or ship with Ubuntu. That claim since seems to have disappeared from Canonical’s site. Vice president of sales and business development Chris Kenyon late last year reckoned Ubuntu would account for 9 per cent of PC shipments next by next year.
Surely the decline of the PC has to hurt Ubuntu and by extension Canonical?
Shuttleworth dismissed the idea that the PC is dead, preferring to say that the industry is re-adjusting to a world of keyboard and touchy tabs.
“Tablets aren’t killing the PC – it’s a phase change,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
100Gbps and beyond: What lies ahead in the world of networking
App-aware firewalls, SAN alternatives, and other trends for the future.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/100gbps-and-beyond-what-lies-ahead-in-the-world-of-networking/
The corporate data center is undergoing a major transformation the likes of which haven’t been seen since Intel-based servers started replacing mainframes decades ago. It isn’t just the server platform: the entire infrastructure from top to bottom is seeing major changes as applications migrate to private and public clouds, networks get faster, and virtualization becomes the norm.
All of this means tomorrow’s data center is going to look very different from today’s. Processors, systems, and storage are getting better integrated, more virtualized, and more capable at making use of greater networking and Internet bandwidth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Who needs HP and Dell? Facebook now designs all its own servers
Facebook’s newest data center won’t have any OEM servers.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/who-needs-hp-and-dell-facebook-now-designs-all-its-own-servers/
Nearly two years ago, Facebook unveiled what it called the Open Compute Project. The idea was to share designs for data center hardware like servers, storage, and racks so that companies could build their own equipment instead of relying on the narrow options provided by hardware vendors.
While anyone could benefit, Facebook led the way in deploying the custom-made hardware in its own data centers. The project has now advanced to the point where all new servers deployed by Facebook have been designed by Facebook itself or designed by others to Facebook’s demanding specifications. Custom gear today takes up more than half of the equipment in Facebook data centers. Next up, Facebook will open a 290,000-square-foot data center in Sweden stocked entirely with servers of its own design, a first for the company.
“It’s the first one where we’re going to have 100 percent Open Compute servers inside,” Frank Frankovsky, VP of hardware design and supply chain operations at Facebook, told Ars in a phone interview this week.
At Facebook’s scale, it’s cheaper to maintain its own data centers than to rely on cloud service providers, he noted. Moreover, it’s also cheaper for Facebook to avoid traditional server vendors.
Like Google, Facebook designs its own servers and has them built by ODMs (original design manufacturers) in Taiwan and China, rather than OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) like HP or Dell. By rolling its own, Facebook eliminates what Frankovsky calls “gratuitous differentiation,” hardware features that make servers unique but do not benefit Facebook.
It could be as simple as the plastic bezel on a server with a brand logo, because that extra bit of material forces the fans to work harder. Frankovsky said a study showed a standard 1U-sized OEM server “used 28 watts of fan power to pull air through the impedance caused by that plastic bezel,” whereas the equivalent Open Compute server used just three watts for that purpose.
A path for HP and Dell: Adapt to Open Compute
That doesn’t mean Facebook is swearing off HP and Dell forever. “Most of our new gear is built by ODMs like Quanta,” the company said in an e-mail response to one of our follow-up questions. “We do multi-source all our gear, and if an OEM can build to our standards and bring it in within 5 percent, then they are usually in those multi-source discussions.”
HP and Dell have begun making designs that conform to Open Compute specifications, and Facebook said it is testing one from HP to see if it can make the cut. The company confirmed, though, that its new data center in Sweden will not include any OEM servers when it opens.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does your copy of Office 2013 die with your computer?
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/does-your-copy-of-office-2013-die-with-your-computer-20130208-2e3a1.html
Can you reinstall Office 2013 on your new PC? Don’t expect a simple answer from Microsoft.
According to the fine print, retail copies of Office Home & Student 2013 are now single-license, so you can only install them on one computer. Some people interpret this as meaning that the retail license is now similar to the OEM license, which covers copies of Office that come pre-installed on a new computer. Under an OEM license you can only run Office on that specific computer. If you buy a new computer, you can’t uninstall that OEM copy of Office from your old computer and reinstall it on the new one.
Meanwhile new copies of Office 2013 states the same licensing details for both retail and OEM copies;
Can I transfer the software to another computer or user? You may not transfer the software to another computer or user. You may transfer the software directly to a third party only as installed on the licensed computer, with the Certificate of Authenticity label and this agreement. Before the transfer, that party must agree that this agreement applies to the transfer and use of the software. You may not retain any copies.
“the software license is permanently assigned to the device with which the software is distributed”, like the old OEM license did.
This is a pretty big deal for people who are trying to decide between Office 365 and a retail copy of Office 2013. Depending on your needs, you might find a single outright copy of Office Home & Student 2013 is more economical than an Office 365 subscription — but not if you can’t keep using it after you next upgrade your computer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel talks new chips, partners at Mobile World Congress
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57570825-78/intel-talks-new-chips-partners-at-mobile-world-congress/
The chip giant said its Clover Trail+ chip has double the performance and triple the graphics capabilities of its predecessor. And it reveals Asus to be a new customer for a couple of its mobile chips.
Intel has made big strides in making more efficient chips, and it has said it believes its chips are on par with those based on ARM.
Intel noted that Clover Trail+ comes in three variations: 2.0 gigahertz, 1.6GHz, and 1.2GHz. The processors come with an Intel graphics media accelerator engine with a graphics core supporting up to 533MHz with boost mode.
Clover Trail+ likely will be a short-lived chip, though, as it’s manufactured at 32 nanometers
Intel has said its Atom line would transition to 22 nanometers and a new architecture later this year.
The processor, dubbed Bay Trail, is Intel’s first quad-core Atom chip, and it doubles the performance of the company’s current-generation tablet chip. Bay Trail should be available in time for this year’s holiday season.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft gooses Windows XP’s custom support prices as deadline nears
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237019/Microsoft_gooses_Windows_XP_s_custom_support_prices_as_deadline_nears?taxonomyId=125&pageNumber=2
And it’s not like Microsoft sprung the retirement date of XP on customers: It’s been hammering the April 2014 deadline for years.
As far back as June 2011, a Microsoft manager claimed it was “time to move on” from XP, while even earlier that year an executive on the Internet Explorer team belittled XP as the “lowest common denominator” when he explained why the OS wouldn’t run the then-new IE9.
But the large price increases will bust budgets of enterprises that had expected the older pricing model — especially those with Software Assurance, who anticipated a cap on custom support costs. “Not having any cap, I think that caught a lot of people by surprise,” said Silver.
Microsoft wants to turn custom support into a money maker, rather than simply recover its costs, which has been its philosophy in the past.
“End of the day, it could be a revenue generator,”
Rather than pay Microsoft for custom support in 2014 and beyond, Silver advised enterprises to spend money this year to migrate as many XP systems as possible to a supported operating system. Failing that, IT administrators should consider bringing all XP clients inside the network perimeter to lower the risk of Web-based attacks, or move the applications those XP PCs are running onto a supported server platform.
“But none of these are easy or inexpensive,” Silver admitted.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla, AT&T And Ericsson Team Up To Demo Seamless Web-To-Mobile WebRTC Integration At MWC
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/24/mozilla-att-and-ericsson-team-up-to-demo-seamless-web-to-mobile-webrtc-integration/
What if your browser could know when you are getting a call on your mobile phone? Earlier this month, Google and Mozilla demonstrated how their browsers’ WebRTC implementations could interoperate. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mozilla is going a step further. The organization has teamed up with AT&T and Ericsson to show a proof-of-concept called WebPhone, which demonstrates how its Firefox browser can use Mozilla’s Social API, AT&T’s API Platform and Ericsson’s Web Communication Gateway to let Firefox users sync with a user’s existing phone number and provide calling services without the need to install any plugins or special apps.
WebPhone, which isn’t currently available to the public, demonstrates how users can receive calls and texts on their desktops. The system was built on top of WebRTC
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infographic charts ‘State of BYOD’
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/byod-infographic.html
Magic Software’s informative State of BYOD Infographic shows how the move to Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) technologies is affecting devices, employees and IT staffs as we enter the year 2013.
“By embracing the rise of BYOD and enterprise mobility, 2013 presents the opportunity for IT to change their role from service providers and technology partners to leaders and business strategists,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chromebook Pixel review: another impractical marvel from Google
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/chromebook-pixel-review/
We’ve had a bit of a love / hate relationship with the Google Chromebook since the first one crossed our laps back in 2011 — the Samsung Series 5. We loved the concept, but hated the very limited functionality provided by your $500 investment.
If you’re going to charge an obscene premium for a laptop with an incredibly limited OS, you’d better produce something that is incredibly well-made. In that regard, the Chromebook Pixel is a complete success.
A dual-core Intel 1.8GHz Core i5 chip is the one and only processor on offer here
For the receiving end, Google has also integrated an array of microphones throughout the machine to help with active noise cancellation, including one positioned to detect (and eliminate) keyboard clatter when you’re typing whilst in a Hangout or the like.
Again, up top is a 12.85-inch, 2,560 x 1,700 IPS LCD panel
A 16:9 aspect ratio (or something close to it) is the prevailing trend among non-Macs these days
Chrome OS has come a long, long way since that first Chromebook crossed our laps.
it’s disappointing that Google didn’t introduce any gestures to the OS to match its newfound touch compatibilities.
But, with one single statistic, Google has made the Chromebook Pixel even easier to write off than any of its quirky predecessors: price. For an MSRP that is on par with some of the best laptops in the world, the Pixel doesn’t provide anywhere near as much potential when it comes to functionality. It embraces a world where everyone is always connected and everything is done on the web — a world that few people currently live in.
The Chromebook Pixel, then, is a lot like the Nexus Q: it’s a piece of gorgeous hardware providing limited functionality at a price that eclipses the (often more powerful) competition. It’s a lovely thing that everyone should try to experience but, sadly, few should seriously consider buying.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft preparing Windows Blue public preview with significant search improvements
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/24/4023724/windows-blue-public-preview-search-improvements
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stop Trying To Make WebOS Happen. It’s Not Going To Happen
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/25/stop-trying-to-make-webos-happen-its-not-going-to-happen/
We need to face facts: WebOS is dead. Barring the unwavering support of the enthusiast community, the former mobile OS will never become a commercial product and, LG investment or no, the possibility of WebOS surviving a sale is nil.
HP is going through the same doldrums all PC makers are facing. Had they put a modicum of energy into updating the TouchPad and the WebOS mobile line, they probably could have made it out of the horse latitudes of the downturn, but as it stands they jettisoned an amazing amount of valuable cargo, including support for the WebOS team. What LG is supposedly buying is a ready-made stack for their smart TV offerings and not a real OS. What HP is selling is dead weight.
TV operating systems are about as low as you can go in the graphical environment game. TVs face a snails-pace upgrade cycle, are orphaned by their makers, and are nearly invisible to the consumer. Slapping WebOS into a TV is tantamount to sticking it onto a medical device – you’re assured a slow and steady obsolescence.
Tomi says:
New Windows 8 PC phone revealed, plus tablet and desktop
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/brierdudley/2013/02/25/new-windows-8-pc-phone-revealed-plus-tablet-and-desktop/
One of the most intriguing new phones being unveiled at this week’s big wireless show in Barcelona, Spain, may be a sleek new Windows model developed in Redmond.
t looks similar to the latest jumbo, slab phones, but it’s a more potent machine inside. The phone runs on Intel’s “Clover Trail” hardware and Windows 8 Pro, so it’s a full-blown PC capable of running most desktop software.
Called the Intelegent, the device could go on sale this summer for $750, which is less than the price of an unlocked iPhone 5 with the same amount of storage capacity.
The phone is more powerful than most tablets. It has an Atom processor, 2 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of storage. It’s designed to work with HSPA+ and LTE 4G wireless networks and have up to 10 hours of talk time.
I-mate will sell the phone alone or as part of a $1,600 desktop hardware suite including a docking station, called the “hub.”
Morrison also sees an opportunity to sell corporate users a reasonably priced desktop suite — including a PC, tablet and phone — all powered by the phone.
Morrison said i-mate will manufacture the phones in the U.S., using screens from South Korea, touch panels from Miami and hardware boards made in Japan.
A facility in California is ready to assemble 10,000 units a week, he said.
The company also is benefiting from Intel’s big push to become a player in mobile devices, beyond the laptop. After years of trying, it gained a legitimate toehold in phones last year.
Atom-based Android phones went on sale in India, Europe and other overseas markets, with producers such as Motorola, Lenovo and Acer on board.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel baking Apache Hadoop into silicon for big data, security uses
http://www.zdnet.com/intel-baking-apache-hadoop-into-silicon-for-big-data-security-uses-7000011802/
Summary: Silicon Valley is turning to Hadoop to tackle big data, and Intel is attempting to get involved at ground level through integration on its chips.
the big picture for Intel is to beef up its portfolio for the datacenter — both for analytics purposes as well as offering a framework that can connect and manage devices within a entire corporation in a scalable manner.
But Intel is framing its deployment of the open source software framework as a ground-up approach by baking Hadoop directly into the silicon level.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based corporation explained that it is utilizing Hadoop because it is open and scalable, thus making it a plum strategy for handling evolving datacenter challenges in the enterprise space.
In many cases now from Hadoop to OpenStack, Davis described we’re seeing the open source technology driving leads in figuring out scale for high-performance computing and the cloud.
Intel added that deploying and managing this Intel-Hadoop distribution should be simple for IT managers because it is “automatically configured to take the guesswork out of performance tuning.”
The Ultrabook maker described that it optimized its Xeon chips, in particular, for networking and I/O use cases to “enable new levels” of data analytics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Torvalds strongly objects to Windows 8 secure boot keys in the Linux kernel
http://www.zdnet.com/torvalds-strongly-objects-to-windows-8-secure-boot-keys-in-the-linux-kernel-7000011811/
Summary: Linux founder Linus Torvalds makes no bones about it. He thinks inserting signed binaries into the Linux kernel is “moronic.”
It started innocently enough. Red Hat software engineer David Howells asked Linus Torvalds, Linux’s founder, to move on code that would let Microsoft-signed binary keys be added dynamically to a kernel while running in secure-boot mode on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). Torvalds wasn’t having it. “Quite frankly, this is f*cking moronic.”
Howell was asking for this so that Linux users can add keys with new Linux software in Windows 8 PCs’ UEFI Secure Boot prisons. These keys would be needed to help properly boot Linux that needed to use proprietary, binary-only drivers such as some graphic chipsets from AMD and Nvidia.
Like it or lump it, the easiest ways to get Linux installing or running on Windows 8 PCs with Secure Boot all involve using Microsoft signed UEFI keys. Matthew Garrett, a Linux UEFI expert and creator of the shim boot method used by Red Hat, pointed out that these keys are only available from Microsoft as PE binaries.
As anyone who follows Linux closely knows, Linux developers have no love for programs that have no source code and are only available as binaries. It goes against the very grain of open-source software. While most Linux users and programmers will grudgingly use such binaries as proprietary graphic and Wi-Fi drivers, the closer a binary comes to the Linux core, to the kernel itself, the less they like it.
Thus, it shouldn’t have come as no surprise when Torvalds blew up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Silicon Valley Is the Next Detroit
http://allthingsd.com/20130226/why-silicon-valley-is-the-next-detroit/
All good things must come to an end, including Motown and many a once-noble region or hamlet. So I have history on my side when I lob the following grenade: Silicon Valley will take its turn someday, falling from the heights it has attained.
I make this assertion because if we look closely, we can already see what will cause the decline of Silicon Valley. In fact, the valley’s residents are consciously planting the seeds of the valley’s own demise.
My cheery assessment depends on this sleight of words: Decline is relative, and the decline that Silicon Valley faces will be less like watching Hewlett-Packard slip into irrelevance and more like proudly standing to one side as the rest of the world — eventually even the less-developed world — catches up to it.
Digital disruption — a force that Silicon Valley gestated and nursed from its earliest days — is now global. Digital devices, the networks that connect them, and the software tools that prod human beings to hanker for more of all these things will soon be everywhere. The long-term effect of rising digital disruption will be to redistribute the benefits of the future across the planet even as it continues to improve the already futuristic valley that started it all. What does Silicon Valley have today that other places will eventually enjoy as well?
Access to three things the valley currently has in spades:
Knowledge. Analytics available to even the lowest YouTube channel producer now rival the most sophisticated reports CBS, NBC and ABC had available in the 1980s.
Tools. Digital disruption depends on the distribution of tools — most of them free or nearly free — that equip anyone who wants to use knowledge to initiate and test a new concept.
Capital. It’s not that there’s money going around. But thanks to the knowledge and digital tools available to you, you need a whole lot less of it to bring your idea to fruition.
People fond of wine and cheese will argue that there’s more to valley life than just these three things. That’s certainly true, but when you have more knowledge, tools and capital, some of the other things the valley prizes become common elsewhere as well. A culture of achievement, for example.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You too? The majority is wrong in think they are using the cloud
Virtualization and private cloud between the border is dark, clear research firm Forrester Research report.
According to Forrester private cloud is up to the IT administrators difficult to piece together the case. Of these, 70 per cent had private cloud a number of entities, which are not.
“This is a big problem. This is a cloud washing, “explains Forrester’s James Staten cloud expert.
The most important thing has not necessarily been staring at that for a certain definition is met.
“Who cares what you call it. What really matters is that your customers and corporate users have access to the resources they need, “says IT company CA Technologies’ Director Andi Mann.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/sinakin+suurin+osa+erehtyy+luulee+kayttavansa+pilvea/a882588?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-27022013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are data centers making ‘market corrections’ on risk assessment?
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/data-center-risk.html
A short report from DCD Intelligence, the research arm of DatacenterDyanamics, points out that data center administrators previously unconcerned about the costs associated with risk aversion are now taking such costs into consideration. As a result, they are now taking a harder look at their real risks and making budget-based decisions accordingly, in contrast to the previous common practice that probably amounted to overspending.
The research conducted for the report “strongly indicates that companies are more willing to take on risk than they were before the crisis,”
Hayes pointed out, “All of this is not to say that companies are taking unnecessary risks. Indeed it would appear that for the past decade companies have been overestimating risk-based concerns since when money was readily available this was the more cautious approach.”
“Now, even where a high degree of resilience is warranted, a Tier 3 facility is being looked on as sufficient to save on the significant cost of building a Tier 4 facility,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IFixit tablet repair index: Dell at top; iPad, Surface at bottom
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-ifixit-tablet-repairability-ipad-surface-20130228,0,277653.story
IFixit, the California company known for its tech tear-ups and how-to-fix guides, has posted a helpful “tablet repairability list” that ranks tablets based on how easily they can be fixed.
The list includes many of the most popular tablets and is a helpful guide for users looking to buy tablets that can be quickly fixed or upgraded with better parts.
“Some may care that their tablets are easy to repair and upgrade; others may not,” IFixit said in a statement. “For those that do, we’ve aggregated our repairability scores for the best-selling tablets into one convenient page.”
Tablet Repairability
http://www.ifixit.com/Tablet_Repairability
Our engineers disassembled and analyzed each tablet, awarding a repairability score between zero and ten. Ten is the easiest to repair.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coming to an e-book or car near you: the Web
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57571954-78/coming-to-an-e-book-or-car-near-you-the-web/
Marrying the broad reach of the Web with two narrow domains, members of the World Wide Web Consortium now have groups adapting Web technology for the automotive and publishing industries.
You’re used to the Web on your PC. You’re getting used to it on your smartphone. So what’s next?
Publishing and automobile industry players have just begun spinning up efforts at the World Wide Web Consortium, said W3C Chief Executive Jeff Jaffe in an interview at Mobile World Congress here. So don’t be surprised to see proprietary technology for e-book readers and in-dash computer systems slowly disappear in favor of software based on Web technology.
Books are perhaps an obvious area for Web technology, given that in electronic form they’re just formatted documents and the Web began its life as a way to share formatted documents. But the two domains have taken years to reach today’s level of convergence.
“The Web equals publishing,” Jaffe said. “There’s really no difference anymore.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM servers: From li’l Acorns big data center disruptions grow
Shuttleworth says ‘vast tracts’ of legacy apps ‘just don’t matter’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/01/arm_server_mwc_panel/
The ARM collective doesn’t just want to get into the data center. It wants to utterly transform it and help companies “manage down the legacy” of existing systems, as Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth put it during a live chat hosted by ARM Holdings to close out the Mobile World Congress extravaganza in Barcelona on Thursday.
“I don’t think there is going to be huge demand for Oracle and SAP on ARM,” Shuttleworth explained on the chat. “I think there are vast tracts of historical enterprise legacy applications that just don’t matter, and I think the ones that are really interesting are already working to bring themselves to places where scale out is the preferred architecture.”
Shuttleworth gave a nod to legacy apps – but it was a shallow on. “Maybe there are some proprietary applications in there,” he said, “but there’s a lot of open source in there and that is where I think the real value will be created. Folks see the legacy as something that they manage down. People have been doing that forever. They managed down on the mainframe, they managed down on Unix and Oracle databases. But what we have got to focus on is the growth part of the market, and that all looks [different] – the landscape there is much flatter than the traditional IT story.”
Wesselman said that there are four things that make ARM processors suitable in the data center – which means not just servers but storage and network devices, as well.
ARM’s leadership in low-power operation is an obvious benefit
But there’s more than that. ARM has a “broad ecosystem of partners that are competing in a really positive way to differentiate themselves off that common, core ARM technology. This leads to faster innovation cycles and more diversity, and better economics in many cases,” he said.
The other neat bit about ARM and other system-on-chip designs, Wesselman said, was to enable “application-specific tuning” of SoCs, moving away from the monolithic, high-volume, general purpose x86 platforms that dominate the data center today.
“We are going to more closely couple the server hardware to the server workload,” Wesselman predicts. “This is really appropriate for some of the markets that we are targeting.”
When you are buying servers in lots of tens of thousands to run your own applications, it makes sense that you can afford to customize your own servers. Google has been doing it for many years, and Amazon, Facebook, and Rackspace Hosting, among many others, followed suit.
To be perfectly fair, Oracle bought Sun Microsystems to do precisely the same thing – match its software to precise hardware and tune the hell out of it – and IBM has for a long time done this with its Power Systems and System z mainframes running its own systems software.
How a data center is like a disk drive
Masters also said that the shift towards hyperscale computing is forcing the change in the data center. Big apps require massively scalable, cut-down systems where the redundancy is in the software and in the quantity of hardware, not in any particular server that is equipped with all kinds of redundancies, because this cuts overall acquisition and operation costs.
The companies that Red Hat is talking to in the hyperscale data center racket are looking at “fail in place” scenarios in which they treat a data center like a disk drive, and while they admire the compact and tuned nature of SoC server nodes with integrated switch fabrics, they are not even thinking about things at the rack level anymore, but at the data center level.
With a fail-in-place data center, you load it up with a few tens of thousands of nodes that have networking on each server node, pipe in external networking and power, and you never do maintenance on it. If a server fails, you mark it as bad, like a bad block on a disk drive, and you just leave it in there and let the network heal around it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8 now up to 2.79% market share as Windows 7 stabilizes after its first decline
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/01/windows-8-now-up-to-2-79-market-share-as-windows-7-stabilizes-after-its-first-decline/?fromcat=insider
Two months into 2013, and Windows 8 continues its slow but steady growth. Windows 7 posted growth after suffering its first depreciation in market share since its launch in 2009.
While Windows 7 slightly regaining share is not too surprising (there are still PCs being sold with the operating system), Windows 8 isn’t growing as quickly as some would have hoped. Windows 8 grew 0.66 percentage points in December, meaning both January’s and February’s gains were smaller.
At the end of 2012, Windows managed to increase its market share after six months of losses, mainly thanks to Windows 7 and Windows 8. In 2013, however, Windows is back to losing share.
Tomi Engdahl says:
GDC State of the Industry research exposes major trends ahead of March show
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/187559/GDC_State_of_the_Industry_research_exposes_major_trends_aheadof_March_show.php
independent game development and smaller teams are on the rise like never before
Smartphones, Tablets, PC Dominate Dev Platforms
Console Development Stable At A Lower Base
Dedicated Gaming Handhelds Showing Minimal Support
Smartphones, Tablets, PC/Android ‘Consoles’ Top Developer Interest Charts
Self-Funding Goes Big, Crowdfunding Interest Blooms
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hey, PCIe flash makers. Look behind you – it’s Samsung
South Korean giant fancies a wodge of NAND cache action
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/04/samsung_pcie/
Samsung is stalking PCIe flash companies and aims to meet them head-to-head. Yes, the South Korean giant is going to enter the PCIe flash card game.
According to Peyman Blumstengel, a strategic business development man at Samsung Electronics, the company has PCIe flash cards on its roadmap and products should appear in the second half of this year.
In passing he mentioned that chip-maker Samsung’s priority for NAND memory at present is to service the mobile phone market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Web Standards Project (WaSP) Shuttered
http://paritynews.com/web-news/item/737-the-web-standards-project-wasp-shuttered
Aaron Gustafson and two of his fellow contributors, Bruce Lawson and Steph Troeth, have announced the closure of The Web Standards Project (WaSP) which was formed back in 1998.
The primary goal of WaSP was to get browser makers support the open standards established by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Gustafson notes in a post titled Our Work Here is Done, “Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality.”
“While there is still work to be done, the sting of the WaSP is no longer necessary. And so it is time for us to close down The Web Standards Project”, he adds.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Darpa Wants You to Transcribe, and Instantly Recall, All of Your Conversations
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/darpa-speech/
The Pentagon’s blue-sky researchers are funding a project that uses crowdsourcing to improve how machines analyze our speech. Even more radical: Darpa wants to make systems so accurate, you’ll be able to easily record, transcribe and recall all the conversations you ever have.
Analyzing speech and improving speech-to-text machines has been a hobby horse for Darpa in recent years. But this takes it a step further, in exploring the ways crowdsourcing can make it possible for our speech to be recorded and stored forever. But it’s not just about better recordings of what you say. It’ll lead to more recorded conversations, quickly transcribed and then stored in perpetuity — like a Twitter feed or e-mail archive for everyday speech. Imagine living in a world where every errant utterance you make is preserved forever.
The idea is that business meetings or even conversations with your friends and family could be stored in archives and easily searched. The stored recordings could be held in servers, owned either by individuals or their employers. Lease is still playing with the idea — one with huge implications for how we interact.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does telecommuting really reduce employee performance?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57572174-93/does-telecommuting-really-reduce-employee-performance/
Academic research suggests that working more than one day a week away from the office, for jobs that require a lot of collaboration with colleagues, can cut into performance.
While there are plenty of benefits to telecommuting, much of the academic research on it shows that working from home tends to work best in limited doses.
“There’s a lot of data on this,” said Ben Waber, a visiting scientist at the MIT’s Media Lab and president and CEO, Sociometric Solutions, a consulting firm. “If you are telecommuting once a week, it’s basically the same as working face to face all the time.”
More time away from the office than that, though, and performance can dip. Waber is quick to point out that certain jobs, ones that deal primarily with people outside the employee’s workplace, such sales representatives, do just fine rarely coming into the office. But Waber said research shows that employees who collaborate with others perform better when they have frequent face time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Virtualisation Format 2.0 lands, world+dog yawns
It’s as if you all want to be locked in
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/ovf_2_lands/
Anyone contemplating a move to the cloud has, by now, paused for a moment to wonder how to escape from their chosen provider of numinous computing.
They’ve done so because shunting a virtual machine (VM) and its workloads into the cloud may seem like a fine idea today, but there are any number of reasons one may wish to place it elsewhere in future. A few come easily to mind: your cloud provider could go titsup or become unacceptably unreliable; you may want to bring the workload back home on a matter to meet a particular need; another cloud could offer better prices, or; you might like the idea of moving the VM for disaster recovery or follow-the-moon electricity-price-saving-fun.
Whatever the reason, the ability to create a virtual machine that can be read and used by any other cloud or hypervisor seems a very reasonable idea.
After years of being taught to be wary of proprietary anything, users are now confronted with closed VM formats, giving them good reason to want something portable.After years of being taught to be wary of proprietary anything, users are now confronted with closed VM formats, giving them good reason to want something portable.
Gartner analyst Michael Warrilow also likes OVF, and says “Version 2 is definitely an improvement,” thanks to enhanced cryptography and ability to place VMs in different locations.
But he also says nobody uses about the standard.
“Gartner sees virtually no interest from enterprises,” he told The Reg. “The only place it has had some value is it makes evaluating software easier.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canonical announces Mir display server to replace X Windows
Plans to rewrite Ubuntu’s GUI from ground up
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/canonical_mir_announcement/
Canonical has announced plans to develop new, open source Linux display-server software called Mir, in a move that it says will help further its goal of offering a unified Ubuntu user experience across PCs, smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs.
Traditionally, desktop Linux distributions have rendered their GUIs using software derived from the X Window System – X, for short – a venerable graphics layer that was developed for Unix by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s.
But many Linux developers think X is showing its age, and that it makes it too cumbersome to create the kinds of sophisticated graphical effects that modern desktop users have come to expect.
Recently, a number of Linux distributions have lent their support to Wayland, a free-software replacement for X that aims to make it easier to render modern, hardware-accelerated GUI desktops.
Until recently, Canonical could be counted among that list. But on Monday it unveiled its plans to develop Mir as a new, completely separate display server, one that is neither X nor Wayland.
Canonical Announces Mir: A New Display Server Not On X11 Or Wayland
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/03/04/1933216/canonical-announces-mir-a-new-display-server-not-on-x11-or-wayland
Tomi Engdahl says:
Storage Product Manufacturer Seagate has announced the ending of manufacturing of high-speed hard drives for laptops.
The Company intends to completely stop the manufacturing of two and a half-inch 7200rpm hard disk before end of year 2013.
Popularity of traditional hard drives has recently weakened due cheaper flash-based solid-state disks.
At the moment Seagate does not sell ssd disks for consumer use, but plans to bring ssd products to market quite soon.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/seagate+lopettaa+nopeiden+lapparikiintolevyjen+valmistamisen/a884152?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-05032013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Offers Price Breaks
Discounts on Windows 8 and Office Designed to Spur More Touch-Screen Laptops
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324178904578343163162251042.html
Microsoft Corp. has recently been offering price breaks on its Windows 8 and Office software to help spur the development of small, touch-enabled laptop computers, people familiar with the situation said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL
Has been chugging Mac Kool-Aid for months
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/06/miguel_desktop_linux_chernobyl/
Gnome project cofounder and current Xamarin CTO Miguel de Icaza says he’s done wrestling with Linux on the desktop, and that he now uses Apple kit exclusively for all of his workstation needs.
De Icaza is well known in the open source community for developing a number of client-side technologies for Linux, including the Midnight Commander file shell, the Gnome desktop environment, and the Mono project.
But in a blog post on Tuesday, de Icaza wrote that not only does he no longer use Linux for his day-to-day computing needs, but he hasn’t actually booted his Linux workstation since October 2012.
“While I missed the comprehensive Linux toolchain and userland, I did not miss having to chase the proper package for my current version of Linux, or beg someone to package something. Binaries just worked.”
“To me, the fragmentation of Linux as a platform, the multiple incompatible distros, and the incompatibilities across versions of the same distro were my Three Mile Island/Chernobyl,” he writes.
“Linux just never managed to cross the desktop chasm,” he concludes
Tomi Engdahl says:
Storage management tools: Why won’t it let me… GRRRR
Big picture vs detail – you can’t have it both ways
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/06/open_storage_management_initiative/
Is it important to manage an individual device very well, or the entire estate at a much higher level?
The nature of management tools available at the moment means that currently we have to make a choice. I’m going to focus on the storage world, but from what I’ve seen the problem affects most disciplines in IT.
The problem lies in the fact that the same team that develops the device develops most of the management tools – at least initially. The device and the tools grow up side-by-side as the test and QA teams need ways of testing the functionality created by the functional engineering teams and there needs to be a simple way to demonstrate the functionality to customers and early investors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Torvalds asks ‘Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more?’
Linux Lord may adopt Chromebook Pixel as main machine … after proper Linux install
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/torvalds_may_adopt_google_chromebook/
Linux Lord Linus Torvalds is thinking about making Google’s Chromebook Pixel his main computer – once he installs a proper Linux distribution on the machine, that is.
Posting on Google+, Torvalds lauded Google’s newest creation, writing “… the screen really is that nice” [his emphasis] and that “I think I can lug around this 1.5kg monster despite feeling fairly strongly that a laptop should weigh 1kg or less.”
” No wonder the PC business isn’t doing well, when they stick to just churning out more crappy stuff and think that “full HD” (aka 1080p) is somehow the epitome of greatness.”
He even thinks the 12.85-inch, 2560-by-1700, 239 pixels-per-inch display and its a 3:2 aspect ratio is so good that it puts the efforts of all other laptop-makers to shame,
Torvalds doesn’t think Google’s computer is perfect; he wants more than Chrome OS because “For a laptop to be useful to me, I need to not just read and write email, I need to be able to do compiles, have my own git repositories etc..”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Heads up DIYers, supply of Intel circuit boards may dry up
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57572727-92/heads-up-diyers-supply-of-intel-circuit-boards-may-dry-up/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
If a report from Asia is accurate, Intel motherboards will become a scarce commodity when Intel’s next-generation Haswell chip launches in June.
The chipmaker cut back on motherboard orders by 80 percent to only 100,000 units, claims an Asia-based Digitimes report, citing sources in the “supply chain.”
“We disclosed internally…that Intel’s desktop motherboard business will begin slowly ramping down over the course of the next three years,” Intel said at the time, as it focuses resources on mobile products.
And there are other large motherboard makers more than able to fill the void, including Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Antitrust: Commission fines Microsoft for non-compliance with browser choice commitments
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-196_en.htm
The European Commission has imposed a €561 million fine on Microsoft for failing to comply with its commitments to offer users a browser choice screen enabling them to easily choose their preferred web browser. In 2009, the Commission had made these commitments legally binding on Microsoft until 2014 (see IP/09/1941). In today’s decision, the Commission finds that Microsoft failed to roll out the browser choice screen with its Windows 7 Service Pack 1 from May 2011 until July 2012. 15 million Windows users in the EU therefore did not see the choice screen during this period. Microsoft has acknowledged that the choice screen was not displayed during that time.
This is the first time that the Commission has had to fine a company for non-compliance with a commitments decision.
Microsoft fined $731 million for breaking EU antitrust promise
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/06/us-eu-microsoft-idUSBRE92500520130306
(Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators fined Microsoft 561 million euros ($731 million) on Wednesday for breaking a promise to offer European consumers a choice of web browser.
“A failure to comply is a very serious infringement that must be sanctioned accordingly.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
So everyone’s piling into PCIe flash: Here’s a who’s who guide
Big names wave their cache cards like a banker at a cocktail bar
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/06/pcie_flash_card_shakeout/
The PCIe flash card suppliers are heading towards a battle royale: there’s too many of them for a commoditising hardware business.
There are at least 15 suppliers of PCIe flash cards, gear that tightly couples a wad of non-volatile NAND storage to a computer’s backbone: EMC, Fusion-io, IBM-TMS, Intel, LSI, Micron, OCZ, OWC, Samsung (products coming), SanDisk, Seagate-Virident, STEC, SuperTalent, Toshiba (products coming), Violin Memory and Virident.
This is a ridiculous situation. As with the development of the disk drive industry, the winners will be those with flash foundry connections, good software and a strong distribution channel. And dedicated software is needed to make full use of that close coupling of flash and a blob of RAM cache.
Once the server retrofitting marketplace settles down from its initial rush, say in two to three years, PCIe flash will surely become a standard part of every server and the server suppliers’ distribution channels.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t be shy, vendors: Let’s see those gorgeous figures
None of that five-nines crap… your actual real-life downtime numbers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/11/storagebod_8feb13/
One of the frustrations when dealing with vendors is actually getting real availability figures for their kit. You will mostly get generalisations
Well, 99.999 per cent available equates to a bit over five minutes of downtime and 99.9999 per cent equates to a bit over 30 seconds downtime over a year. And in the scheme of things, that sounds pretty good.
However, these are design criteria and aims – what are the real world figures? Vendors, you will find are very coy about this
Yet, there’s a funny thing … I’ve never known a presentation where the design criteria are not met or even significantly exceeded. So why are the vendors so coy about their figures?
Raw availability figures are not especially useful if you don’t know the sample size.
Sample characteristics: I’ve seen vendors do some really sneaky things when backed into a corner to provide figures.
There are many tricks that vendors try to pull to hide causes of downtime and non-availability
Do not believe a vendor when they tell you that they don’t have these figures and information closely and easily to hand.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PC Market Forecast to Decline for a Second Consecutive Year in 2013, According to IDC
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130304006585/en/PC-Market-Forecast-Decline-Consecutive-Year-2013
-Despite intense industry efforts to overcome market inertia, 2012 nonetheless ended on a sour note with global PC shipment volume shrinking 3.7% on the year.
With limited initial traction from Windows 8 in the holiday season, and continued pressure from tablets, IDC now expects 2013 PC shipments to decline by 1.3% in 2013, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.
Furthermore, emerging market growth potential is declining and coming closer to that of mature regions. 2012 marked the first year that emerging markets have seen a volume decline, and while 2013 will return to growth, it is projected at less than 1% and with modest, single-digit growth through 2017.
efforts thus far have been disappointing.
“The PC market is still looking for updated models to gain traction and demonstrate sufficient appeal to drive growth in a very competitive market,”
“We also anticipate a new refresh cycle momentum in the commercial segment driven by the end of Window XP life support.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Microsoft probably couldn’t care less that the EU just fined it $732 million
http://qz.com/59911/why-microsoft-probably-couldnt-care-less-that-the-eu-just-fined-it-732-million/
Microsoft violated the terms of its settlement of an anti-trust case, says the European Commission, by failing to let users know that they could use a web browser other than Microsoft Internet Explorer on their Windows-based PCs.
This may seem like a very last-century thing to be fretting about, what with the rise of mobile browsers, which now have more than 10% of the total market for web browsing, but the Commission is almost certainly justified
Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser on the planet
But here’s why Microsoft need not care about the €561 million ($732 million) fine: According to its latest 10-Q statement, the company has $51 billion in overseas cash burning a hole in its pocket.
Microsoft refuses to bring home to the US because to do so would be give up 35% of it in corporate taxes.
Microsoft is going to miss the half billion dollars in US cash equivalent (if it were repatriated and US taxes paid)
that may simply be the cost of maintaining market share for its desktop browser.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows tablet is non-European taste – Samsung surrender
Microsoft has a bad day in Europe.
Samsung plans to stop the Microsoft Windows operating system using the RT-flat sales of computers in Europe in Germany and some other countries, says a German site Heise .
The reason for this is the site, the fact that Windows RT-board computers there is not enough demand.
Microsoft has not commented on equipment sales, but analysts estimated that sales have been poor.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/windowstabletti+ei+eurooppalaisille+maistu++samsung+luovuttaa/a884691?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-06032013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIO Survey Reveals Weaknesses in Virtualization Data Protection
Veeam’s Virtualization Data Protection Report 2013 Shows Capability, Complexity and Cost Issues Hampering IT Departments
http://www.veeam.com/news/cio-survey-reveals-weaknesses-in-virtualization-data-protection210.html
Key findings:
68% of CIOs feel that their backup and recovery tools will become less effective as the amount of data and servers in their organization grows.
Recovery of virtual servers is only a little faster than that of physical servers, at 5 and 6 hours respectively. This is actually worse than in 2011, when recovery took 4 and 5 hours.
Every hour of downtime costs an enterprise $324,793: meaning that downtime is, on average, costing organizations at least $1.6 million per incident.
Recovering individual files and application items can take even longer: for example, recovering individual emails takes on average 14 hours.
Regardless of recovery times, enterprises experience problems with more than 1 in 6 recoveries.
88% of CIOs experience capability-related challenges with backup and recovery, 84% with complexity and 87% with cost: showing that data protection is still not a simple task.
58% of CIOs are planning to change their backup tool for virtual environments by 2014.
Currently, virtual infrastructure accounts for 51% of enterprise servers, with this expected to grow to 63% in 2014.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Green Grid Publishes New Data Center Recycling Metric
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/0116246/the-green-grid-publishes-new-data-center-recycling-metric
“The Green Grid, which helped popularize metrics for minimizing wasted electricity in data centers, has developed a new method for cutting down on wasted electronics as old servers and other equipment reach their inevitable retirement. The Electronics Disposal Efficiency metric is designed to help minimize electronic waste, specifically servers and other enterprise hardware.”
Green Grid Publishes Recycling Metric
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/green-grid-publishes-recycling-metric/
Concerned that manufacturers may trash servers and other equipment at the end of their useful life, the Green Grid develops a reuse and recycling metric.
The Electronics Disposal Efficiency metric is designed to help minimize electronic waste, specifically servers and other enterprise hardware. It will take a cue from other organizations, including the Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative. The Green Grid is trying to build on established regulations that govern the disposal of consumer electronics such as televisions, including the rules governing Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) within the EU.
Green Grid decided that recyclers need to be ISO 14001 certified, on top of being audited “to the end of the line”—presumably to ensure that materials were being recycled and not discarded somewhere along the recycling chain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flash, bang, wallop: LSI stumbles in quest for PCIe card crown
Lost its EMC contract? Bah, only a flesh wound
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/07/lsi_flash_stumble/
LSI claimed at the end of August that it was going to be number two in the PCIe server flash business – then its revenues declined in the final three months of 2012. What’s going on?
LSI is now in its second quarter of declining revenues and profits and faces a third weak period.
The company now boasts that NetApp has validated its PCIe flash cards – a new way of gluing non-volatile memory tight against a server’s backbone
But that news pales besides the loss of its EMC supply deal. LSI was one of two suppliers to EMC. With NetApp’s Flash Accel, LSI is one of seven or more suppliers.
LSI sells its Nytro PCIe flash cards to Oracle, IBM, Cisco and others.
There are more than 15 other PCIe flash card suppliers and LSI has no strong flash foundry relationship to assure it of a constant supply of chips.
We are now in production with Oracle and Cisco, and expect to begin shipping at a very large web cloud company in the first half of this year.”
So who is the web cloud company? LSI isn’t saying.
The PCIe flash market was described by Talwalkar as being “in its infancy”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablets Now Taking A Greater Global Share Of Web Page Views Than Smartphones, According To Adobe’s Digital Index
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/tablets-vs-smartphones-page-views/
The proportion of web traffic coming from tablets has pushed past smartphones for the first time, according to Adobe’s latest Digital Index which has tracked more than 100 billion visits to 1,000+ websites worldwide, between June 2007 to date, to compare which device types are driving the most page views.
Adobe attributes the rise of tablet page views to how well-suited the form factor is for web browsing, with the most obvious attribute being tablets’ larger screen size vs smartphones (albeit, that gap is closing as some tablets shrink and some smartphones swell). On average, Adobe found that Internet users view 70 per cent more pages per visit when browsing with a tablet compared to a smartphone — so tablet users are doing more leisurely (and presumably leisure time) browsing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here they are: the seven IT trend in 2013
Social media, mobility, analytics and cloud services have become more tightly at the heart of business activities.
Accenture’s Technology Vision 2013 report on the future of the most successful businesses that take advantage of Digitality business better than the competition.
1. Digitality should be used to achieve a closer dialogue with customers.
2. Finding relevant information is attached to the right questions.
3. Competitive advantage is a quicker use of information
4. More social work and processes.
5. Software-virtualized networks.
6. A pro-active approach to information security in favor.
7. Now is the time to prepare for the transition to the cloud.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/tassa+ne+ovat+italan+seitseman+trendia+vuonna+2013/a885215?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-08032013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft relaxed the Microsoft Office user agreements – now the software can be transferred to the new computer. The company has also allowed the resale of licenses, but not the EU Court of Justice at the level required.
EU court denied last summer Oracle prevent application software re-sales. According to the distributor of the software waive the right to distribute the software to exclusive when it sells the customer a copy of the program for an unlimited period.
The court decision was based on an EU directive on the legal protection of computer programs for the year 2009.
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/bisnes/2013/03/08/microsoft-peraantyi-officen-siirto-oikeudessa–toimii-yha-laittomasti/20133588/66?rss=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
SAMSUNG: No One Is Buying Microsoft’s Surface, Windows 8 Isn’t Very Good
More bad news for Microsoft and its new operating system, Windows 8.
The president of Samsung’s memory chip division, Jun Dong-soo, had a lot of negative comments about Microsoft in a meeting with reporters. The Korea Times transcribed his quotes.
First, he said the obvious: “The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8.”
Then he added this: “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”
Vista is considered to be one of the biggest disasters for Microsoft. It’s not good for a partner to compare the new Windows to Vista.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-exec-on-windows-8-2013-3#ixzz2NE30cAvV
Tomi Engdahl says:
Four months in, Windows 8 needs help
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57573370-75/four-months-in-windows-8-needs-help/
Microsoft needs to fix Windows 8 to make it easier for the average consumer to use, says IDC.
After four months of tepid Windows 8 PC sales, maybe it’s time for Microsoft to make a few changes.
During a conversation I had this week with IDC analyst Bob O’Donnell, he volunteered the following statement, which sounded strangely like my experience.
“There were certain decisions that Microsoft made that were in retrospect flawed. Notably not allowing people to boot into desktop mode and taking away the start button. Those two things have come up consistently. We’ve done some research and people miss that.”
“And there are a lot of people that as soon as they boot into Windows 8, they go to desktop mode and do most their work there and occasionally back to Metro. But the point being they’re much more comfortable with desktop mode.”